You probably already have long term virus infections in your body right now. Most adults already have hsv or hpv, for example.

because you want to see if you have covid not a cold. I have a cold right now, so what?

Perhaps ironically, there's a good chance your cold is caused by a different coronavirus (there are several that are endemic in humans, and are one of the viruses that cause the "common cold")

? everybody who can stays at home in my country, no matter sick or not sick. it has been now 2 weeks since I didn't go out.

a side question is how a guy living alone, ordering deliveries, managing to get a cold... it must have been the deliveries.

I guess you missed the point. With a cheap and imprecise test you wouldn't need to stay home at all times (only when carrying a virus) and the economy could continue running mostly as it would normally.

However, everybody seems focused on a test designed specifically for Covid-19 which means the economy will remain shut down for months to come.

Do you have a proposed design for such a test? I think you would be astounded by the diversity among viruses - they've been evolving for millions/billions of years, and there are an estimated 10e31 on earth “if all the 1 × 1031 viruses on earth were laid end to end, they would stretch for 100 million light years.”

More importantly, almost adults are permanently infected with viruses like EBV. And there are genes like Arc that seem to be descended from retroviral genes. So what do you test for?