Today, David Pakman presented a plan originally proposed
in the Washington Post May 15, to end the worst of the pandemic (for good) by
July 4. The idea is to dissociate somewhat from the need to have a vaccine or major prophylactic available for most of the public to simulate herd immunity first.
The basic idea is to divide the country into stoplight
zones: green, yellow, and red. (We had a
childhood hide-seek game like that in Ohio
as kids in the 1950s, where people could hide until the light turned yellow and
red. We played outside and invented real
physical world games.)
Green zones would have all businesses open, and would have
to meet very strict infection case limits, based on numbers of tests in
proportion to population.
Yellow zones would be like our “phases 1 and 2” but case-to-test
ratios and case test volumes would meet much stricter norms. Contact tracing would be complete (as in
green zones to snuff out the virus).
Red zones would add the stay-at-home orders. NYC would still be a red zone, DC area would
be yellow.
The Post perspective is by Alex Tabarrok and Puja
Ahluwalia Ohlhaver (and is phrased in terms of a July 4 objective now.)
We did not have adequate testing machinery from the
CDC in February. But by late February we could see what was happening in Italy
and what would happen to us, just because of European travel. With rapid testing
and mandatory Asian-style contact tracing, we could have locked down most of
the country for about 5 weeks (two incubation cycles) and with accurate testing
and contact tracing, and quarantine and isolation, most of the country could
have been green by the first of April. A
few larger cities (NYC and CA cities) would have been yellow, probably.
A national order (that Pakman suggests) would have
been a very strong State of Emergency, which could have been accompanied (unlike
our situation now) with shutdown of a lot of frivolous Internet and social
media use. (See my blog posting Jan 5, 2019 on the “Books” blog based on an
Atlantic article then about this problem.)
I’m a little surprised that Pakman could trust Trump (based on Pakman’s
other comments about Trump) retrospectively (he suggests March 5, 2020 as the
drop-dead date) with these powers.
Still, there would have been problems. “Green” areas would have had to quarantine
visitors from other areas, and this would have persisted a few months. Much
activity in some businesses (like larger crowds in bars and discos) would have
had to be shut down, and there could have been real questions as to whether
they could return without a vaccine or “pseudovaccine” (the “gay medicine” theory
which has some merit).
Moreover, the rules for isolation and quarantine would
have to be spelled out very clearly.
Since they would amount to civil detention (without normal due process),
there would have needed to be national norms of compensation for lost time from
work (much like income protection insurance on some stronger corporate health
insurance plans for employees). Potentially
tricky questions would come up with people who could run their own businesses
online while confined, but I can imagine problems that could come up (depending
in part on how these businesses are funded and on their degree of redundancy
and interruption planning).
Pakman says we can still start now and be in good
shape by the end of the summer. But you
would really have to spell out the details.
Work-from-home under stricter short-term lockdowns that we have had
could be trickier than we expect.
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