What I speak of could be done very quickly (like in days) with just 1000 random samples (think polling) antibody tests. I believe I heard that an anti body test has been developed. And I'm not talking about the need to produce large quantities, then we finally would have an accurate measure of the denominator.
I know they are close to an anti-body test. I don't know if it is being used yet. I agree. Epidemiologist have various sampling algorithm to give them a reasonable clear picture with a minimum of tests. Kinda like Six Sigma Design of Experiment techniques.
Antigen tests are different matter. We need to be massively testing everywhere to catch asymptomatic super-spreaders and get them isolated so we don't keep digging the hole we are trying to get out of.
I don't know if mutations equate to different strains technically. I don't know if they have enough in common that a vaccine can have effectiveness across the variations. I can't answer those questions. We do have to keep changing the Flu vaccine because it keeps mutating. Subsequent vaccine versions are not as hard as the first one because the year variations are generally not massive.
(NYPost isn't my favorite source but I doubt they are lying...)
https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/iceland-scientists-found-40-mutations-of-the-coronavirus-report-says/I haven't decided how to feel about the possibility of a quickly mutating virus. On one hand it makes it very hard to develop a vaccine or do meaningful anti-body testing.
On the other hand, the economies of transmission dictate that over time a virus will become more infectious, but less deadly. There is no economic benefit in a virus killing it's host. Killing the host is not an intended feature of a virus, it's a bug. (See what I did there?
) So if it's quickly mutating, maybe it quickly mutates to a less deadly form.
But it doesn't always work that way. some times the virus screws up. The second wave of the Spanish Flu that came back in the Fall was much more deadly. The majority of the 20 million deaths occurred in that phase.