Cancer screening debate

Parallel case (not today's prompt): A walk-in clinic is deciding whether to give a rapid strep test to every patient who comes in with a sore throat. Most sore throats are caused by viruses, not strep bacteria, and antibiotics only help true strep infections. Should the clinic test everyone?\n\nClaim: Testing every sore-throat patient for strep does more good than harm when the test is used to guide antibiotics for patients with strep symptoms, but not when it is used on patients who clearly have a common cold.\n\nEvidence 1: For patients with strep-like symptoms such as fever, swollen glands, and no cough, the rapid test catches a real bacterial infection early, so the right patients get antibiotics that shorten the illness and prevent rare complications like rheumatic fever.\n\nEvidence 2: For patients whose symptoms clearly point to a virus, the test can turn up a false positive or detect harmless strep that is just living in the throat, and those patients may then take antibiotics they do not need, which causes side effects and helps bacteria become resistant.\n\nReasoning: The value of the test depends on who is being tested, so a blanket yes or no is too simple. When a patient has real strep signs, a quick result leads to treatment that works and prevents harm. When a patient plainly has a cold, a positive result trades a real harm, unnecessary antibiotics, for almost no benefit, because antibiotics do nothing against viruses.\n\nReflection (counterargument): One counterargument is that testing everyone is fairer and avoids missing a case, since symptoms overlap and doctors guess wrong sometimes. My response is that missed cases are a real risk, which is why the test should still be used freely for anyone with strep-like symptoms, but testing patients with obvious cold symptoms mostly adds cost and false positives without saving lives.