If US wants to beat coronavirus it's going to need the biggest brother of them all, claim experts
The COVID-19 pandemic now has hit over 500,000 people in the US and the country is now only a few hundred deaths away from toppling Italy as the one with the most fatalities. While the healthcare crisis continues, America is also facing a mammoth downturn on its economic front with 17 million people having lost jobs already.
Responding to the coronavirus with lockdowns has raised the worries over the economy. The million-dollar question now is: How long will it take for American life to return to normal, without risking the disease spinning out of control?
Three reports have come out in recent times from institutions ranging from conservative to left-leaning that explored the question and none of them have sounded optimistic. The bodies—American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Center for American Progress (CAP) and Harvard’s Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics—indicated that life in the US will not normalize till a vaccine is distributed widely and that, once the relaxations are relaxed, drastic interventions will be needed.
Differing views on duration of lockdown
The reports have called for national lockdown which could be relaxed only after certain conditions are met.
According to the AEI, the restrictions would soften from state to state after one state sees daily new cases reducing in number for 14 days. For CAP, the national lockdown would continue for 45 days while the Harvard body said it would continue for three months.
The CAP and Safra reports also spoke in favor of digital surveillance systems and, while AEI proposed 750,000 tests per week, Safra sought millions of daily tests.
Surveillance to beat pandemic
The idea of deploying surveillance systems, however, could spark new controversies as several human rights bodies have already warned against turning the temporary surveillance in the times of the pandemic into a measure to permanently breach individual privacy.
All three reports agreed over some viewpoints including banning gatherings of more than 50 people and encouraging remote working, as much as possible, although it was reported recently that only 37 percent of Americans can do their work from the corner of their homes.
With a safe and effective vaccine still months or more than a year away, it is not too difficult to forecast that life in America will not see the normalcy restored any time soon.
On Thursday, April 9, President Donald Trump said more than two million coronavirus tests were done in the US but suggested that mass testing will not happen, even though the experts have warned that a comprehensive program is vital to get life back to normal in the country.
While Trump applauded the rising number of coronavirus tests as the US went past South Korea as the nation with the most number of tests administered, it is not to be forgotten that the US has conducted far less number of tests per capita since its population is more than six times more than that of South Korea.
Worldwide, nearly 1.7 million people have been hit by the virus while over 100,000 lives have been lost.