Originally Posted by
FlightlessParrot
1. Unfortunately, negative tests do not prove that you don't have the virus: they're a pretty good indicator, but the virus is very hard to control, so a country might well decide that a pretty good indication is not good enough.
Well negative test kind of sort of proves that you are not actually shedding virus
right now. If the tests are reasonably accurate they may be good enough to clear you for entering airport and flight - which would in itself be useful because others could be assured that there was low (not zero, tests never 100%) chance that there would be infectious people in airport or on flight.
The big issue, however, is that the long incubation period means you may be negative, and non-infectious,
now but incubating it - so isolation / quarantine period at the other end is
still required (this is what many people seem to fail to grasp on this, and is actually an argument
against testing on arrival, because the negative-but-still-incubating will be even less likely to isolate once told they are negative).
2. There are many parts of the world where a negative report could be bought--perhaps for less than the cost of a high-quality test. I do include quite a lot of places in the "First World" in this.
It really does look as though the only way to control this thing, at the moment, is by measures that look like overkill.
Yep, and possibly you could avoid quarantine if you had already isolated and
then tested negative - but getting any one country to trust another in certifying that will be impossible. And of course you have broken isolation if you get on a flight so your cert is null and void...
That said, I suspect that travel is going to start to open up between the "overkill" countries who have clearly successfully supressed the virus - the world may split into covid and non-covid zones with quarantine between the two. I know which zone I'd rather be in, but I've got zero chance of that right now...