EVERYBODY wants to open up for business as soon as possible...but as far as I can see the only way to properly re-open the economy is with some system of assuring that we can do so safely. Restarting the economy any other way will simply be a matter of guessing when and where and who is safe. Wrong guesses will result in re-igniting the virus, more death, and prolonging the hard times. The difficult economic re-start might safely be accomplished with voluntary participation in a widespread testing program with an accompanying date base of those who have been tested. Those who test negative for the virus will be sent an encoded bar code (?- I am not a techie...you get the idea) with their status to their cell phone that can be used as admission to businesses. Businesses of course would need to voluntarily participate and demonstrate that any employees test negative as well as check people at the door for proof of a negative test.
I am quite sure that mandatory testing and participation in a database would violate our fourth amendment as well as a very stubborn American streak that distrusts sharing personal medical information with the government. I get that. Participation would have to be voluntary- but I suspect that within two or three months there are many businesses and people that will be willing to do so.
Many business will be desperate to open. If they have a way of assuring customers that other customers are “Safe” I can easily see people start to patronize them. It won’t be business as usual, but it will be a lot more than being closed. I also submit that it will be safer than guessing about when and how to open.
I don’t pretend that this approach would be completely fool proof or a total guarantee of public safety. There are myriad details about how long a certification is good for, maintaining data privacy etc. It will also require that testing become widely available and of course overall supervision of the data. None of that will be easy- but NOTHING about this is easy and it is one way to begin opening this back up with a least some system of doing it safely.
This is a very large undertaking and in order to make it happen within a few months work needs to start ASAP. (Hey- I had the idea- ya can’t expect me to do ALL the work!)