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by anonytrary 2037 days ago
> simply pay businesses and people to lockdown

This is anything but simple. Vast majority of businesses and people will not be supported if indefinite lockdown continues. The hidden costs of bankrolling an entire country for an indefinite period is much greater than the cost to deploy a persistent, scalable testing framework. The latter is also an investment into the future as this will not be the last pandemic.
2 comments
threeseed 2037 days ago
No. It's very simple. You just keep paying people until the lockdown is over.

Again this isn't some hypothetical exercise. Australia and NZ have just done this and now have basically eliminated COVID-19.

As opposed to manufacturing and distributing 100s of millions of tests each week which is very much an unproven exercise.

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cryptoz 2037 days ago
Australia and NZ are not America. This is the same mistake Elon made when he suggested the US would have 0 new cases by this past April; the US is not China. The differences are actually so big that comparisons are dangerously misleading.

The problem in the US is that you cant pay people enough to change their minds about the politics. They would be, and many in fact are, millionaires and they would still refuse the test. Even if it meant jail time.

These solutions simply don't work in America.

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eloff 2037 days ago
I'll believe it is simple when you specify how much money is needed and where it comes from to do that.
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threeseed 2037 days ago
In the US you just need to look at the COVID-19 bills that are tied up in Congress for an idea of the money needed i.e. ~ 2-5 trillion.

And you can fund it exactly the same way you did for the GFC (print money) or WW2 (war bonds).

But compare it to the cost of the US bouncing in/out of lockdowns for the next 9-12 months.

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eloff 2037 days ago
Sounds like a terrible idea.
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chii 2037 days ago
> entire country for an indefinite period

it's not indefinite - it's just long enough to cut down unknown transmission to a managable number for contact tracing to kick in. Then public health measures like masking up and distancing is effective enough afterwards.

Businesses cannot stand uncertainty - a on-off lockdown that they cannot predict is the worst, because they cannot make investment decisions with this sort of huge uncertainty.

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