Memorandum to Ohio House 2020 Economic Recovery Task Force

By David Clingingsmith and Susan Helper*

Ohio has been one of the most successful states in the nation at curbing the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic. The early actions by Governor DeWine have saved many lives.

Saving these lives has demanded a significant and unprecedented sacrifice by Ohioans. Many people have been unable to work or run their businesses. While the federal government has offered significant support, it will not fully offset these sacrifices.

We need to get back to work as soon as it is safe to do so. However, the danger is that most Ohioans are still vulnerable to COVID-19.

There is no vaccine and most Ohioans have not been infected.

As we reopen, people will come into closer contact and the virus will spread again. This will happen just as surely as the seasonal flu does every year.

We need to be ready to contain the spread by rapidly isolating those who become ill and those who have been in contact with them.

To do this, tests must be available to any Ohioan who has any symptoms.

If a person tests positive, we need a mechanism to find everyone who they were in contact with during their infectious period. The infected person and their contacts must quarantine for two weeks.

Testing and tracing is easier when the number of infections are low. You need fewer tests and fewer resources to test. Outbreaks will be easier to catch and contain. We should therefore stay at home until there are no new infections.

Reopening without testing will either lead to another closure or hundreds of thousands of deaths nationwide.

In ideal circumstances, the federal government will develop and deploy a national testing strategy that will procure the resources needed to do testing and tracing.

The number of tests needed will be many times greater than the capacity we currently have.

This is a national emergency and states should not have to compete against each other for tests.

If a federal program is not developed, Ohio must develop its own, perhaps in collaboration with other states. Funds could be raised through a special bond issue or a surtax.

It may appear that there is a trade-off between economic output and deaths from COVID-19. As economists we are used to thinking about tradeoffs and think asking about them is a reasonable question. However, evidence from the 1918 pandemic suggests that cities that did not employ social distancing during outbreaks both had more deaths but did not have better long-run economic outcomes.

Conclusion: Ohio cannot safely reopen (and cannot benefit from sacrifices already made) until tests and contact tracing are readily available to any Ohioan who has symptoms of Covid-19.

*Clingingsmith and Helper are professors in the Department of Economics at Case Western Reserve University. This memorandum presents the views of the authors and not Case Western Reserve University.