I’ve continued thinking about how we get back to work. I’m a little disappointed actually that I haven’t heard anyone, Democrat or Republican, offer a detailed plan of how this actually works.
My proposal is that everyone must be tested at least monthly. To enter a business, whether its your business or another business, first we must check if you have been tested in the last month.
So the requirement then becomes, we need to scale up the testing so that we have the capability to test everyone, monthly. Right now we have run a total of about 1 million tests, so we are way behind on this. But any responsible government official who is advocating getting back to work must be working to make this capability available.
There has been a proposal that antibody tests would be faster/cheaper. Perhaps they will be a game-changer. Unclear.
Of course it would be better to be tested every day, but that seems technically unlikely. Being tested bi-monthly seems too slow to slow an epidemic. If we have no testing, it will simply be terrifying to go to work. Like playing Russian Roulette.
We also need a method to verify whether someone entering a business has been tested. For this, we could have a national system thats linked to your driver’s license or cellphone. Electronic doorlocks will determine whether to let you enter or not.
Most businesses do have electronic doorlocks that verify your identity. Now these systems need to be updated to verify that you have been tested.
So we see 2 requirements here. First, all businesses must install systems that check to see if entrants have been tested within the last months. Second, its up to the government to develop capability to test everyone, every month.