To answer the question, it depends on what kind of people are currently testing themselves. A New York Post article claims that per capita, white liberal areas in Manhattan test three times as much as white middle class areas in South Brooklyn, and they use anecdotal evidence to show that the Manhattanites are basically being frivolous about their testing while South Brooklynites only test themselves when they’re sick. If this is true about Boro Park and Midwood too, then it would make sense to test more nonsick people in our neighborhoods to reach the same ratio of well people frivolously testing to sick people testing that white liberals have.
If however, there is no deficit of regular well people in our community testing, then encouraging more testing just to artificially lower our rates can potentially be dangerous in many ways. On the other hand, this egregious lockdown on our neighborhoods, which is horrible on every level, makes me want to say that anything should be done to lower our numbers.
There is another concern that people might have, that if we all test, even if the positivity rate goes down, the number of positive people will inevitably go up, and the government/media will decide to drop the current metric and begin using number of positives as a new metric. I personally was nervous about this happening, but I’m beginning to think that De Blasio and Cuomo will have to explain to everyone in two weeks from now how their lockdowns are very successful yada yada yada, and how the positivity rates are down all because of their decisions yada yada yada so they’ll look for any number that’s good news.