[PJ] On Wednesday, a coronavirus advisor to Joe Biden suggested that America should enter a stringent lockdown for 4 to 6 weeks in order to restrain the spread of COVID-19. He described the current state of the country as "COVID hell" and suggested that more federal spending would make another round of lockdowns economically feasible."We have a big pool of money out there that we could borrow. We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies to medium-sized companies, for cities, states, county governments," Michael Osterholm, director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a member of Biden’s 12-member COVID-19 advisory board, told Yahoo Finance.
"If we did that, then we could lock down for 4 to 6 weeks, and if we did that, we could drive the numbers down, like they’ve done in Asia, like they did in New Zealand and Australia."
He then suggested that this would put America in a strong position before a vaccine becomes available "in the first and second quarter of next year, and bringing back the economy way before that."
Osterholm wasn’t referring to the supposedly weak and permissive lockdowns from earlier this year. No, he encouraged far more stringent restrictions. He referenced a New York Times op-ed he co-wrote with Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari back in August.
By lockdown, "we mean people must stay at home and leave only for essential reasons: food shopping and visits to doctors and pharmacies while wearing masks and washing hands frequently. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 39 percent of workers in the United States are in essential categories. The problem with the March-to-May lockdown was that it was not uniformly stringent across the country. For example, Minnesota deemed 78 percent of its workers essential. To be effective, the lockdown has to be as comprehensive and strict as possible."
While Osterholm and Kashkari warned that "there won’t be a robust economic recovery until we get control of this virus," many economic indicators have shot up recently, even as COVID-19 cases grow. In October, the unemployment rate dropped to 6.9 percent and GDP grew by a whopping 33 percent in the third quarter of the year.
Related:
Michael Osterholm: 2020-07-19 The study of nearly 65,000 people in South Korea is bad news for N.C. Teachers Union
Michael Osterholm: 2020-03-18 'Straight Talk': Here Are the 10 Key Things a 'Medical Detective' Says About COVID-19
Michael Osterholm: 2007-04-25 Rich and Poor Battle Over Bird Flu
Michael Osterholm: 2020-07-19 The study of nearly 65,000 people in South Korea is bad news for N.C. Teachers Union
Michael Osterholm: 2020-03-18 'Straight Talk': Here Are the 10 Key Things a 'Medical Detective' Says About COVID-19
Michael Osterholm: 2007-04-25 Rich and Poor Battle Over Bird Flu