I’m appalled by our failure to rollout widespread testing, and by the number of states now rushing to prematurely reopen nonessential activity before they have significant testing or contract tracing capacity, let alone a deceleration in new case rates. I fear that Georgia is about to shoot itself in the foot and get a lot of people killed in the process.

Prematurely restarting social and economic activity, seeing new waves of coronavirus cases, and then needing go back to square one (i.e., shutting down again, for longer) is also a huge downside risk against the best-case-scenario “V-shaped” recovery.

Relatedly, I recently signed on to a letter of economists calling on policymakers to prioritize our public health response, and not prematurely reopen economic activity. Here’s a copy of the full letter, which is being circulated by Equitable Growth:

The current list of signatories can be found here. If you are an economist and would like to add your name the sign-on form is available here.