We could stop the pandemic by July 4 if the government took these steps - The Washingto... - 0 views
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We, too, favor markets and share the president’s eagerness to stop economically ruinous shutdowns.
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the choice between saving lives and saving the economy, the latter of which Trump has endorsed implicitly, is a false one.
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in a pandemic, encouraging the sick to haul themselves into work can be disastrous. The plan backfired. Hundreds of Smithfield employees were infected, forcing the plant to shut down for more than three weeks. If we stay the current course, we risk repeating the same mistake across the whole economy.
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The economy consists of people who have hopes and fears. As long as they are afraid of a lethal virus, they will avoid restaurants, travel and workplaces.
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The only way to restore the economy is to earn the confidence of both vulnerable industries and vulnerable people through testing, contact tracing and isolation.
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To pull off this balancing act, the country should be divided into red, yellow and green zones. The goal is to be a green zone, where fewer than one resident per 36,000 is infected.
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Here, large gatherings are allowed, and masks aren’t required for those who don’t interact with the elderly or other vulnerable populations.
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Two weeks ago, a modest 1,900 tests a day could have kept 19 million Americans safely in green zones. Today, there are no green zones in the United States.
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even in yellow zones, the economy could safely reopen with aggressive testing and tracing, coupled with safety measures including mandatory masks.
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Today, 30 million Americans live in such hot spots — which include Detroit, New Jersey, New Orleans and New York City.
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Most Americans — about 298 million — live in yellow zones, where disease prevalence is between .002 percent and 1 percent
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by strictly following guidelines for testing and tracing, red zones could turn yellow within four weeks, moving steadfastly from lockdown to liberty.
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Getting to green nationwide is possible by the end of the summer, but it requires ramping up testing radically. The United States now administers more than 300,000 tests a day, but according to our guidelines, 5 million a day are needed (for two to three months)
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Researchers estimate that the current system has a latent capacity to produce 2 million tests a day, and a surge in federal funding would spur companies to increase capacity. The key is to do it now, before manageable yellow zones deteriorate to economically ruinous red zones.
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States can administer these “test, trace and supported isolation” programs — but Congress would need to fund them. The total cost, we estimate, is $74 billion, to be spent over 12 to 18 months
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That amount is a lot, but not compared to the cost of a crippled economy. In Congress’s latest relief package, $75 billion went to struggling hospitals alone, $380 billion to help small businesses and $25 billion toward testing.
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Economists talk about “multipliers” — an injection of spending that causes even larger increases in gross domestic product. Spending on testing, tracing and paid isolation would produce an indisputable and massive multiplier effect.
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Nations that have invested the most in disease control have suffered the least economic hardship: Taiwan grew 1.5 percent in the first quarter, whereas the United States’ gross domestic product contracted by 4.8 percent
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Looking forward, we will see stark economic contrasts across states, depending on their investment in disease control.
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When local and state governments become accountable for adopting strategies that work, we can expect more innovation.
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How do we know that testing, tracing and supported isolation would work? It already has worked in New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan