This is the best, most comprehensive assessment I’ve seen for how the U.S. should respond to the Covid-19 pandemic!
https://ethics.harvard.edu/files/center-for-ethics/files/roadmaptopandemicresilience_updated_4.20.20.pdf Conclusion: We have no time to waste. We can save lives, save our health infrastructure, mobilize our economy, protect our civil liberties, and secure the foundations for a resilient constitutional democracy. We can be democracy’s bulwark against this existential threat if we elevate our ambitions and determine to act swiftly and with purpose. OUR ANCHOR RECOMMENDATION IS THIS: Between now and August, we should phase in economic mobilization in sync with growth in our capacity to provide speedy, sustainable testing, tracing and warning, and supported isolation and quarantine programs for mobilized sectors of the workforce. We do not propose a modest level of testing, tracing, and supported isolation intended to supplement collective quarantine as a tool of disease control. We recommend a level of TTSI ambitious enough to replace collective quarantine as a tool of disease control. We need to deliver 5 million tests per day by early June to deliver a safe social reopening. This number will need to increase over time (ideally by late July) to 20 million a day to fully remobilize the economy. Achieving these numbers depends on testing innovation. We acknowledge that even this number may not be high enough to protect public health. In that considerably less likely eventuality, we will need to scale testing up much further. By the time we know if we need to do that, we should be in a better position to know how to do it. An effective strategy of pandemic resilience requires the following: Innovation in testing methodologies. A Pandemic Testing Board established by the federal government with strong but narrow powers that has the job of securing the testing supply and the infrastructure necessary for deployment. Federal and/or state guidance for state testing programs that accord with due process, civil liberties, equal protection, non-discrimination, and privacy standards. Readiness frameworks to support local health leaders, mayors, tribal leaders, and other public o cials in establishing test administration processes and isolation support resources. Organizational innovation at the local level linking cities, counties, and health districts, with speci cs varying from state to state. Federal and state investment in contact tracing personnel, starting with an investment in 100,000 personnel (recommendation from JHU Center for Health Security). Clear mechanisms and norms of governance and enforcement around the design and use of peer-to-peer warning apps, including maximal privacy protection, availability of open source code for independent and regulatory audit, and prohibitions on the use of any data from these apps for commercial purposes, ideally achieved through pre- emptive legislation. Support for quarantine and isolation in the form of jobs protections and material support for time in quarantine and isolation as well as access to health care. An expanded U.S. Public Health Service Corps and Medical (or Health) Reserves Corps (paid service roles), and addition of Health Reserves Corps to the National Guard units of each state. National Infectious Disease Forecasting Center to modernize disease tracking (recommendation from Scott Gottlieb, AEI). Consensus is emerging about what we need. How to do it is beginning to come into view. The time for action has arrived.
