The rapid test isn't very accurate especially in the absence of a full blown infection. The annual cost of doing a PCR test twice a week to ensure you always have an actually accurate test within 72 hours of working would be around $15,600. This is about 43% of the gross individual median income.
For practical purposes employers can't afford to pay near 50% more for the least reasonable employees, the government isn't incentivized to do so to make it easier not to vaccinate when this is really a poor substitute insofar as public health, and only the minority of employees can afford this.
In effect the end result of a practical testing alternative is to pretend we are giving them a choice while in fact giving them little choice.
The rapid antigen test is considerably less accurate than a PCR test if the goal is individual medical treatment, but if the goal is public health, it's potentially more effective. Michael Mina makes the case for this persuasively in a recent UCSF Grand Rounds[1].
These tests could be made available at scale and cheaply, as is the case in many European countries, but we have chosen not to do that. This is a mistake we can fix, but it's agonizing how late we are - I was pushing my congresspeople to unblock it in January or February.
Correction, as was the case in many European countries. Freely available tests in e.g. Germany ended today, as the cost of a vaccine shot is cheaper than that of a rapid test while tests need to be repeated every 24h.
% chance of having covid * % chance of being asymptomatic * the % chance of the test failing * % chance that you transmit it to someone who is vaccinated * % chance they actually become sick..... this is one figleaf of an excuse for these mandates
Such chances are cumulative over time and number of unvaccinated coworkers. Given a large body of unvaccinated there is no reason to suppose that the chance of infection doesn't continue over many years and approach 1 over multiple years.
I and a lot of others don't accept any reasonable chance that you are going to kill me or my family members at work today.
Instead of trying to reason badly via analogy I invite you to consider to consider the plain facts of the case. In terms of strategy especially near term the overall health of the American people is what it is. A multitude of factors like aging and many health conditions are immovable rocks beyond our power to affect while others like weight are diet may be individually tractable but in aggregate we cannot expect at a stroke to make massive change whereas we absolutely can vaccinate everyone.
Even the best of choices at this juncture will leave you at some risk even if you are young healthy and hale and far less risk if you choose to vaccinate. Describing it as a weak patch to bad health just belies reality.
For many who make up much of the dead the best route to safety lies in both they and people like you choosing to vaccinate so you don't infect and kill them. I have bad asthma. I cannot just "do some sports" and eat some leafy greens to ameliorate that risk. Worse my wife has an autoimmune disorder that requires her to take immuno suppressive medication. The best data so far suggests that if she were to get infected despite vaccination her chance of mortality would be on the order of 1 in 8 with some cardiovascular or lung damage being likely inevitable because she wont know to stop taking the weekly meds that stomp on her immune system until the virus already has a foothold.
She is hardly alone. There are millions of people like her in addition to 54 million 65+. People who by and large can't afford to live in a bubble. It just impossible for a large portion of the population to isolate. I have little choice but to do an in person job that might expose me to someone who thinks like yourself and have their sniffles scar my lungs that don't work that great to start with or end my wife's life whereas if we could get people like yourself to understand the unmitigatable risk others face we could drastically reduce that risk by taking a risk that in the scheme of things is no riskier than driving to work this morning and just getting a shot.
For practical purposes employers can't afford to pay near 50% more for the least reasonable employees, the government isn't incentivized to do so to make it easier not to vaccinate when this is really a poor substitute insofar as public health, and only the minority of employees can afford this.
In effect the end result of a practical testing alternative is to pretend we are giving them a choice while in fact giving them little choice.