Is it though? Is it the case that asymptomatic carriers are as likely to spread the virus as those who are sneezing and coughing already? That doesn't seem likely, to me. If you have limited capacity to do full tests, then testing for symptoms like a fever is better than nothing.
I don't know - the whole topic seems quite complicated and I find it hard to trust anyone, experts or not, about it.
One thing I wonder about, is whether there's an element of circularity about medical reasoning.
The authorities won't test you for coronavirus unless you meet certain risk criteria - because it's not that common so if you haven't travelled to a high-risk area like Italy or been in contact with a known sufferer it's more likely you just have flu or a cold and hence it's a waste of time and resources to test you for it. But if they don't test people, they aren't going to know how common it actually is. It seems there's a danger of circular reasoning about this.
Edit - I mean, is that not pretty much what happened? The criteria for testing was so stringent they didn't test many people, and hence the infection spread unnoticed, as they continued to believe it was 'rare' and so didn't test for it, and so failed to notice it wasn't as rare as they thought it was.
That has occurred to me in the past in other contexts - as a medic, when diagnosing someone with something you have to take into account how common that something is. That's reasonable because if it's rare that is going to affect how likely it is that a possible case actually has it. But if doctors are therefore reluctant to diagnose people as having a certain condition, it's going to continue to be seen as 'rare' because nobody gets diagnosed with it. Isn't that a bit circular?