By Kiran Sreepada

With calls to reopen the economy growing louder and louder by the minute, the great concern is that we do not sacrifice our health by acting too early or irresponsibly. It’s important to keep in mind that much of the country has not seen a surge of coronavirus cases, and may experience that in the coming weeks. More importantly, without adequate testing, we will not be able to safely reopen the economy. As former Senator and physician Bill Frist pointed out, we need a massive testing movement on two fronts: to figure out whether you have the virus today and a blood antibody test to figure out if you already had it. That second test is critical to reopening the economy and getting back to life as we knew it. Without either, we cannot safely reopen the economy and risk more people being infected and our medical capabilities struggling to keep up. 

This is not to say that people aren’t hurting. Many small businesses remain closed with the rest operating at a fraction of their capacities. Consumer spending is down and unemployment claims are approaching depression era levels. However, our solution in this crisis should not depend on risking the health of millions for potentially short-term gain, we must be able to support the short-term sacrifice with the goal of coming out of this healthy for the longer term. Simply put, if we reopen now and another wave of the virus hits, we will be right back at square one. Instead, it is in these times that the government needs to use all available resources to make sure we get through this healthy on all fronts. While we started down that path with the CARES Act and other measures, we need to do much more. With the Trump administration running out of small business relief in just a few short weeks, we see how the small business supports were insufficient and many entrepreneurs across this country are in danger of being left behind. Additionally, it is an insult to the American public that millions of dollars meant for small businesses went to big corporations, hedge funds, and larger systems – something that could have been monitored by more oversight. Similarly, we can also see that individual relief was nowhere near enough to help people get through a crisis that might last a few months or longer. Ask yourself, when planning the stimulus did the administration and its supporters plan for a few weeks without thinking through the health consequences, or for a few months? Then ask yourself whether they considered that people and businesses may not come back immediately just because you say the economy is reopened? This kind of planning is what was lacking with this response, but it isn’t too late to fix it.

We need to plan to reopen not with a date in mind, but with a set of goals we need to accomplish. While governors across this country have accepted some notion that a framework to reopen is necessary, until recently the President and his supporters were pushing for a hard date. When the President couldn’t put forth a coherent plan he said governors would determine when each state reopened, something that was within their power to begin with. Senator Frist, in a separate publication, echoed what those governors set forth – displaying not a sense of bipartisanship in a hyperpartisan environment, but the reality that the truth and the best path forward is independent of political party and will attract all those who are reasonable and concerned with the future of this country. Any framework must build off the testing capabilities mentioned earlier, continue some protective measures and social distancing, dramatically increase the availability of PPE, continue supporting research and development on the virus, and adapt to the situation on the ground. Doing that will not just help us get back to work, but hopefully put focus on those who were marginalized during the crisis, and who were always marginalized before the crisis began.