Baloney. They knew very well that you did not have COVID-19, and you were ready to return to work. They would much prefer to collect federal $$$ by classifying you as COVID-19. You yourself wrote that you "didn't have coughing or breathing issues." Duh!

I assume that you yourself did not, and do not, intend to knowingly defraud American taxpayers. But for health-care bureaucrats, defrauding governments and insurance companies via bogus classifications is par for the course. Bureaucrats are roughly 95% Democrat, so they believe that all health care should be paid for by the government anyway.

The final proof that your diagnosis is utterly bogus: You were not given a prescription for hydroxychloroquine (or ivermectin or even over-the-counter quercetin). Every doctor with a brain is supposed to be following the recommendations of the East Virginia Medical School COVID protocol.
[link to www.evms.edu (secure)]

Further proof that doctors are cooking the books! If the tests are as worthless as he says, why are Fauci and his co-conspirators pushing them on everyone?

But that's exactly what your ER did not do! You said yourself that you were feeling fine and ready to return to work. The ER, instead, went into a situation comedy routine, insistently telling you that you were sick with a strange virus when you are actually perfectly healthy at this point.

The goal of "symptoms first" is to prescribe at least a small dosage of hydroxychloroquine as quickly as possible--it's basically harmless even if the patient turns out to have something else.