https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/how-to-get-the-economy-back-into-gearHow to get the economy back into gearWashington Examiner
April 16, 2020
Byron York
excerpt:
...the priority should be to bring the virus under control, which will reduce public unease, and then begin to reopen the economy. The virus first, then the economy.
The first thing needed is for the current virus mitigation measures to work. The number of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths has to go down. And not for just a day or two; they have to show a clear declining trend. That is a prerequisite for anything.
And it could be in sight. "I think we are reaching a place where some return toward normalcy is possible," said Yuval Levin, a former Bush White House domestic policy adviser now with the American Enterprise Institute. "There have to be some standards where we say if, in your state or your part of the state, we've gone 10 days with declining caseloads, then we think of ourselves as in phase two. At that point, based on testing capacity, some things can open. These things would happen at different times in different places."
Others propose another standard — for example, some say cases should decline for 14 straight days. But to restore confidence, other things have to happen, too. As Levin suggested, there needs to be widely available, fast testing. There must be plenty of masks. There needs to be confidence in local hospital capacity. "We have to arrest the spread of the virus," said Cotton, "and we have to give people confidence that if they do get out of their homes, go back to work, or go back to their normal economic life of shopping and going to restaurants and so forth, that 1) they're probably not going to get the virus, and 2) if they do, the healthcare system will be up and functioning and able to treat them."
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