I'm kinda in the middle....lock-down...social distancing...proper usage of masks. All good things. However I have some reservations about stuff (such as enforcement and how we pay for stuff). But that can be set aside for now. My question is this...
Interesting. How do you think we should pay for this stuff?
~Jeordam
First, get the governors together, and mandate a national lockdown, with strict parameters and measures for reopening, namely: 1. training enough people to perform contact tracing, or coming up with a software method that does the same. 2. Build sufficient capacity to test (and I mean PCR test, which looks for the current presence of the virus) a set percentage of the population at a given time. I believe this value will change based on population density, but the idea is, with contact tracing and testing, you can trace the spread and quarantine only those who actively carry the virus, as opposed to a general lockdown, once your number of new cases per day stabilizes, as a result of the lockdown.
While these capacity limits are being built up, I would have simultaneously used the Defense Production act to ramp up production of N95 masks and other PPE, ventilators, and necessary drugs that help stave off death (antibiotics to fight the secondary infections which occur after you get the coronavirus, and are usually the tipping point that cause death, for instance). I would also centralize the purchase and distribution of these supplies from other countries, so producers cannot price gouge, and cannot make states bid against each other to jack up prices. I would have the governors agree to a need based distribution strategy.
Meanwhile, I would enforce mask wearing in public, to be continued even after a general lockdown lifts. And while I have no hopes that the rural-urban divide in healthcare access can be overturned in a short timespan, I would work as much as possible to build hospital capacity in severely undeserved regions where even small outbreaks can quickly overwhelm the medical system.
The United States simply failed in all these metrics. It didn't institute the lockdown early enough, and broadly enough. It didn't use the time there was a lockdown to actually do stuff that would justify lifting the lockdown. And with the narcissist-in-chief in the White House, i we have a second wave, and a second round of lockdowns, I have no real hope he will use it to correct the mistakes made the first time around.
