Coronavirus 9 Point Recovery Plan

Calm Down — A Sane Plan to Avoid Global Collapse

Photo in San Francisco (Source: SF Gate)

I have the dubious distinction of studying macroeconomic at Harvard Business School and last year taking out loans to buy and grow small community businesses. Today I have to furlough a significant part of my workforce and fight to save my business and my children’s welfare. We are under quarantine in the Bay Area. Layoffs are happening everywhere. It’s not just grocery stores which are out of stock, it’s also gun stores. Our policies are putting us on an exponential brink of collapse.

Having some basic macro policy understandings plus feeling the on-the-ground gut punch very directly puts me in an unenviable position to all too clearly understand the grave risk in front of us.

Feel free to share with anyone you would like and to adjust if necessary. It does not have to be total economic lockdown/destruction or nothing. Ideas are free. Our country is priceless. Don’t panic, and let’s save our country.

Plan as of Wednesday morning, March 18, 2020. Everything to be implemented immediately through the leadership of our government.

1. White House must define who is truly an at-risk person (note 1); such as people over 70, those with compromised immune systems, multiple pre-existing conditions etc. Assure others that if they are not part of the at-risk group that their risk is extremely low.
2. Build immediate medical system capacity through a Manhattan Project of temporary medical infrastructure. Turn government buildings, sports arenas, empty university dorms, and convention centers into hospitals with beds to take care of people with severe symptoms. Make it very visible. Build a military style field hospital in every park if necessary. Show people we have tens of thousands of excess beds to help stop the panic of “we won’t have enough beds.” Couple this with a nationalized production of respirators, masks, etc. I realize there may be a gap in medical personnel, but the progress alone will help calm people down and set us up for success. The contracting dollars will also temporarily help every community.
3. Set up drive thru tests centers everywhere testing everybody. Accelerate test kit production to maximum output. Coordinate the collection and analysis of data.
4. Use smartphones to communicate and track. Direct Apple, Google, etc. to send a daily While House text update on stats (recoveries, capacity, etc.). Twitter is not enough. Sharing data will calm nerves. It’s the uncertainty that causes panic. Those testing positives to install a simple app tracking development, provide daily updates, and receive guidance. This should be optional but most will opt-in anyway. Let a company like Google build it, they should be able to get a minimal viable product in under a day.
5. Direct all high-risk personnel to remain quarantined. Prohibit contact with a high risk personnel unless you are a medical professional, have been tested, or are already living with them.
6. Continue the limits on high transmission risk events such conferences, sporting events, and gatherings over 50 people, etc.
7. Slowly open schools back up. Some of our society’s most vulnerable includes single parents and dual income parents scraping by; they have no child care options. They cannot work.

• First open up elementary schools. There hasn’t been a single death in the world by a child 10 and under as far as I know. Those children are more likely to die in a car accident going to school than from Coronavirus. Prohibit contact between those children and at-risk demographic (it’s why steps 1 and 5 are so key). If high risk person lives with a student, either find temporary housing for the at-risk person or keep that student at home.
• Then open middle schools
• Then high schools

8. Return people to work. “if you can work from home, please continue to do so. But if that’s not an option, get back to work. We must continue to work as a nation and bring security to our families.” Return businesses to normal function while adhering to strict hygiene rules and social distancing.

9. Stimulus package; I would leave that to the fiscal experts to design. Focus on undoing the damages businesses are absorbing.

Note 1: Italy just reported that 99% of their deaths were people with pre-existing conditions, and that the median age of people who died was over 80! (Source): I do not think that our elders would want to see the livelihood of their children and grandchildren destroyed over this.