Virus testing, as with carbon tax, fails to get to crux of the matter
Both measures have their limits, and without co-ordination they will not succeed
New York — Shutting down was the easy part. Covid-19’s daily exponential growth to the tune of 33% or more dwarfed all other concerns. The choice was between “shut down now” or “shut down later”. Shutting down the US a week earlier would have cut deaths by about a factor of 3, two weeks earlier by about a factor of 10.
Emerging from our medically induced economic deep-freeze will not be as quick, but there, too, is a first-best approach that dwarfs almost all else: test, test, test. Test early, test quickly, test often. Even a bad test beats no test. The US alone will have to do millions of tests for any hope of crushing, not merely flattening, the virus curve. In fact, why not just test everyone? Iceland is attempting to do just that...
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