A Step By Step Plan to Manage the Pandemic and Reopen the Country

I sense that the discussion on where we go next, among those who truly know what they are talking about, is centering on a phased approach that responsibly balances both medical safety and reopening of our economy.

My last post directed you to David Katz's op-ed which generally outlined such an approach.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) now has a more lengthy paper authored by a number of experts, led by former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

Their plan has three key phases:

1. Slow the Spread - This is essentially where we are in the nation's various lock downs. "These measures will need to be in place in each state until transmission has measurably slowed down and health infrastructure can be scaled up to safely manage the outbreak and care for the sick."
2. State-by-State Reopening - "Individual states can move to Phase II when they are able to safely diagnose, treat, and isolate COVID-19 cases and their contacts."
3. Eliminating Physical Distancing Restrictions and Other Phase II Measures - "Can be lifted when safe and effective tools for mitigating the risk of COVID-19 are available, including broad surveillance, therapeutics that can rescue patients with significant disease or prevent serious illness in those most at risk, or a safe and effective vaccine."

I will suggest that we are so far behind the curve in making testing readily available and supplying health care providers with their equipment needs, that it will be months, not weeks, before "transmission has measurably slowed down and health infrastructure can be scaled up to safely manage the outbreak and care for the sick."

But, I will also suggest we will not be able to get back to anything resembling normal until we have a vaccine, mass produce it, and have made it available to the general population. Hearing experts tell us that all of this won't likely occur for one to two years makes it necessary to come to an agreement on what Phase Two will look like and when we can move to it.

You can see the full AEI report here.

A Plan to Quickly Confront and Defeat Coronavirus Without Collapsing the Economy?

What America lacks right now is a plan as we veer into one reaction to this pandemic after another.

I am not an epidemiologist so I offer no professional opinion on just what that plan should be.

But, if you haven't yet read the op-ed in the NY Times by David Katz of Yale University, you should.

An excerpt:

The data from South Korea, where tracking the coronavirus has been by far the best to date, indicate that as much as 99 percent of active cases in the general population are “mild” and do not require specific medical treatment. The small percentage of cases that do require such services are highly concentrated among those age 60 and older, and further so the older people are. Other things being equal, those over age 70 appear at three times the mortality risk as those age 60 to 69, and those over age 80 at nearly twice the mortality risk of those age 70 to 79...

The experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which houses a contained, older population, proves the point. The death rate among that insular and uniformly exposed population is roughly 1 percent...

The clustering of complications and death from Covid-19 among the elderly and chronically ill, but not children (there have been only very rare deaths in children), suggests that we could achieve the crucial goals of social distancing — saving lives and not overwhelming our medical system — by preferentially protecting the medically frail and those over age 60, and in particular those over 70 and 80, from exposure...

If we were to focus on the especially vulnerable, there would be resources to keep them at home, provide them with needed services and coronavirus testing, and direct our medical system to their early care. I would favor proactive rather than reactive testing in this group, and early use of the most promising anti-viral drugs. This cannot be done under current policies, as we spread our relatively few test kits across the expanse of a whole population, made all the more anxious because society has shut down.

This focus on a much smaller portion of the population would allow most of society to return to life as usual and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy from collapsing. Healthy children could return to school and healthy adults go back to their jobs. Theaters and restaurants could reopen, though we might be wise to avoid very large social gatherings like stadium sporting events and concerts...

A pivot right now from trying to protect all people to focusing on the most vulnerable remains entirely plausible. With each passing day, however, it becomes more difficult. The path we are on may well lead to uncontained viral contagion and monumental collateral damage to our society and economy. A more surgical approach is what we need.

Will the Trump Administration's Testing Snafus for Coronavirus Be Their Political Version of the Democrats' Catastrophic Launch of Obamacare?

As I have watched the Trump administration fumble the ball on getting mass coronavirus testing available to communities, I am reminded of the way the Obama administration fumbled their own ball during the Obamacare launch in 2013:

• Repeated statements on how well things were going in the face of facts that did not match their rhetoric.
• Not having a handle on what could go wrong and what did go wrong from beginning to end.
• Delays that led to a public lack of confidence in the administration.

The difference this time is that the Obamacare fiasco was ultimately brought under control and, while people not being able to sign up for their health insurance for a few weeks was not a small deal, it wasn't the life and death scenario we are facing today.