A foregone prediction

Economists Jason Winfree and Jill J. McCluskey, U of I and WSU, write in the Wednesday guest opinion (“Economy will not survive long shutdown,” April 1) about the probable effects of a long drawn out “social distancing” approach currently in place around the United States. In addition to acknowledging the health challenges, they offer a reasonable solution which has been offered before by others, namely that areas of low infection and relatively healthy populations should be able to return to work with little risk of expanding the exposure limit and bringing the health care industry to it’s knees. These areas could be rural, suburban or even pockets in large cities. Younger, asymptomatic and recovered persons with immunity define this population.

There is one flaw with this suggestion based on our current trajectory. The key to this approach is data - testing data that identifies the above population that could return to work. The current administration’s delayed and error-ridden early approach has delayed the acceptance of an accurate test and the roll out once a test was approved has been slow, cumbersome and ineffective. The current administration’s lack of leadership in this area is fundamentally why we are 3-4 weeks behind countries that did recognize the pandemic early, created the test and deployed it to their populations quickly thus flattening the curve and easing the economy back to production.

Ironically, the federal government’s abysmal response to this pandemic will be the reason the two professors’ prediction about economic damage will likely come to pass.

Barry Cross

Spokane