The lockdown measures put in place have started to flatten the curve, but they are hugely disruptive and even if we were better about freezing the economy than we are, we cannot possibly maintain them until we have a vaccine (which is many months off at a minimum). So how do we get back from here? There are three essential ingredients that need to be in place: masks, tests and tracing for all.
How do we get these at the time of a dysfunctional federal government? Well here are some possibilities.
Masks for All: This is the easiest one as it turns out that reasonably effective masks can be homemade. Kudos to the team behind #Masks4All for popularizing this straightforward solution. You can also find tons of masks on Etsy.
Tests for All: Masks will not prevent all infections, so we need massive testing. Thankfully there are a lot of new ways to test for the SARS-CoV-2 virus at scale. For instance there is a new assay to use existing sequencing capacity to ramp to 1 million tests per day and another proposal for using “barcoding” to pool samples which can get us to the 10s of millions of tests per day. The cost here is low enough that these can all be privately or state level funded.
Tracing for All: Then of course once someone tests positive we need to notify everyone they may have infected. That requires tracing. The solution for that are mobile apps because our phones are always with us and know where we have been. There are several credible teams working on centralized approaches such as Coronatrace, as well as the emerging TCN coalition for a decentralized system. Both Apple and Google should put their considerable resources behind these efforts immediately. Update: Apple and Google have announced a tracing approach.
I believe we can have all three of these firmly in place some time in May at which point many of our regular activities can resume. To be clear, people will still get infected and some people will die from those infections. But with hospitals not overwhelmed treatment will be significantly better and mortality rates lower (also new treatment options are emerging).
What can we do as individuals? To the extent you can based on your skills and where you work, please contribute to one of these initiatives. If you can’t, make sure to put pressure on your local or state government to embrace this approach.
