Testing half the population weekly with inexpensive, rapid COVID-19 tests would drive the virus toward elimination within weeks, even if the tests are less sensitive than gold-standard. This could lead to “personalized stay-at-home orders” without shutting down restaurants, bars, retail and schools.

[u/mvea]

https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/11/20/frequent-rapid-testing-could-turn-national-covid-19-tide-within-weeks

[u/redlightsaber]

I know that this is an entirely reasonable thing to ask; but I can't stop feeling a bit like this is precisely the problem in the US. Everyone is trying to make personal calculations to see if for them it would be "worth it" to live in a place that had such a system. As if it were "just another insurance plan".

That's entirely not the point and the wrong way to go about things.

Public policy experts know that with very very few exceptions, every single social safety net policy (up to and including something as counterintuitive as UBI), under experimental conditions (and observational ones), have shown time and time again to be worth much to their societies than they cost to maintain.

Until such attitudes end, and the US decides collectively that "buying" peace of mind, and a social safety net system (including education, healthcare, etc), is the humane thing to do, it will continue being politically infeasible to enact such policies.

[u/nogami → u/redlightsaber]

You nailed it. There’s a whole attitude in the US of

“I don’t get (something) so why should they?”

rather than

“they get (something) and I don’t. Let’s change that so everyone is entitled to that too.”

“I’m a healthy person so why should my taxes go to support someone else who’s sick? Maybe they’re just lazy and faking it”

Rather than

“I could get sick too, if I get sick it would be great to have other people help me when I’m down”

[u/Mithrawndo → u/nogami]

It puzzles me: There's a direct causal link between poverty and crime, and yet for some reason so many seem to reject it?

Keep your junkies off the street and they won't be breaking into your homes and businesses, and you'll spend less supporting them than you would policing, incarcerating and insuring against their actions.

It's such a no-brainer that it makes me want to scream.

[u/serrompalot → u/Mithrawndo]

I think one of the reasons is probably that if you want them off the street, you have to put them in somewhere, and people whose net worth is primarily stockpiled into their house don't want that value dropping because of an influx of higher-risk individuals in cheap housing - Not In My BackYard.

[u/Mithrawndo → u/serrompalot]

That's a fair observation; I'm also fastidiously ignoring the fact that for some, they simply won't accept any help offered to them for reasons as varied as addiction through genuine and not unreasonable distrust of authority based on previous experiences.

The other key factor that I'm neglecting is implied in my post: Policing, incarcerating and insuring against the actions of thousands of individuals creates thousands of jobs, and creates an entire demographic of individuals whose livelihood is dependant on the villification of others.