Coming Back

I both agree and disagree with the editors of the New York Times in their prescription for “reopening” America. For example, I agree that contrasting the need to preserve life with the need to keep the economy afloat is a false dichotomy:

This is a false choice. While policymakers must sometimes make trade-offs between life and money, this is not such a moment. The American economy needs to be shut down in order to preserve both human life and long-term prosperity. During the 1918 influenza pandemic, communities that quickly imposed stringent measures not only saved lives but experienced stronger economic rebounds, according to a new study. The message is clear: Coronavirus is a danger to life and prosperity; a strong public health response is the needed corrective.

but I disagree with their strategy. Keeping the economy shut down too long will kill people much more surely than COVID-19 will. The economy of 2020 is not the economy of 1920. Farming is not as important to the economy as a whole as it was then. There has been enormous consolidation—there are fewer companies per million population than there were then. Banks and the whole financial sector comprises a much large portion of the economy.

Offhand I’d say that a one month shutdown will lead to 10% of companies declaring bankruptcy and a three month shutdown will lead to 30% of companies declaring bankrtuptcy with longer shutdowns doing even more damage. After a year-long shutdown there would be little economy to reopen. I can think of no surer method of returning to the economy of 1918 than than acting as if it were still 1918.

It increasingly appears necessary that for the next eight weeks, and possibly for longer, all nonessential businesses should be closed, domestic travel restricted and the “shelter-in-place” measures being employed by some parts of the country extended to the rest. Such a shutdown will be enormously expensive in the short term, likely requiring fresh rounds of federal aid on top of the $2.2 trillion Congress approved on Friday. But scientists say that based on what they’ve learned from Europe and Asia, that’s the only way to get the virus, which is spreading like wildfire across the country, under control.

Quite to the contrary the too-slowly increasing testing should be exploited to allow us to selectively end the mass shutdowns in favor of much more targeted shutdowns. People who are provably, testably non-infected should go back to work with all due haste. It may be that very densely-populated areas like New York City and San Francisco should remain locked down for a protracted period. I agree with them, however, that foreign and domestic travel should be restricted, including American citizens. IMO one of the biggest mistakes in the early days of the pandemic was not quarantining everybody returning from international travel.

I agree with them that we will need to do a lot of testing on an ongoing basis. I disagree that the method for doing so should be by beefing up public health:

To build such capacity, the federal government will have to invest in the nation’s undervalued and deeply strained public health system: more funding will be crucial, but it will not be enough. State and federal leaders should work together, now, to create a public works corps to assist epidemiologists with contact tracing, to erect thousands of drive-through testing sites, and to do the work of infection control in nursing homes and homeless shelters. Some states are already doing this on their own, but others will need federal funding — perhaps in the form of block grants.

That is simply not how our government operates in the 21st century. What could happen is that the federal and state governments could let contracts to private organizations, for profit and non-profit. Such a process is guaranteed to be far too time-consuming, will only let contracts to preferred organizations, and will, ultimately, be a license to steal. How could they possibly know there are no “shovel-ready projects”? Much more needs to be done by local governments and the private sector. In many (but not all) cases the best role for the federal and state governments will be to get the heck out of the way. People, both as individuals and in the form of companies are eager to do what they can to aid in this “war effort” just as they were during World War II. Unfortunately, just as then, too, some are eager to profit from it. Dealing with that is a legitimate activity for the state and federal governments.

I’m not opposed to this:

Public health authorities also should oversee the creation of temperature checkpoints outside of factories and office buildings, and in other close-packed or high-traffic places — and those measures should be increased anytime disease detectives find the hint of a brewing outbreak. This will take a combination of state-level mandates and aggressive public advertising campaigns. People hate being told what to do, never more so than when it comes to their own bodies; clear and consistent messages will help mitigate the predictable pushback.

This is nonsense:

Some scientists are working to rectify that problem — to create the apps and websites that such a crisis demands. But those efforts will only be useful if they are brought to scale quickly. That, too, will take federal oversight and financial support.

Have they not learned their lesson yet? The federal governments is incapable of creating or overseeing the creation of solid, functional web sites and apps in a short time frame. Do you know who can do that? Google, Amazon, Facebook and a handful of other companies. They should be shamed into producing these sites and apps as their part in the “war effort”. To do otherwise will push their development into a future after the need is over, to be developed by a qualified vendor, i.e. one with political connections.