Let’s get real about coronavirus testing . . .

We do not know how severe the covid-19 epidemic will be or how much economic and social pain it will cause, but it clearly has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans, and the economic consequences could include a deep recession and even a financial crisis that will cause misery to tens of millions of people.

Testing is key to getting the epidemic under control, and it is not clear to me that policymakers are being nearly as aggressive about expanding testing capacity as they should be.  Think of two alternative testing strategies.  One strategy is to selectively test people who have symptoms or who may have been exposed to someone with the disease.  The alternative strategy is to develop the ability to do mass screenings for the virus among the general population.  (There are various intermediate strategies one can imagine, such as doing mass screenings in local areas with a high incidence of disease.)  Of course, selective testing is the place to start, but the ability to do mass screenings would allow us to pro-actively identify and isolate almost all carriers and would thus avoid the need for widespread social isolation which is wreaking havoc on the economy.  Selective screenings, in contrast, may or may not be able to contain the epidemic sufficiently to allow normal economic activity to resume.

I am not sure what is being done to expand our testing capacity, but if we want to develop the ability to do mass screenings, we need to make it a priority nowThe government will need to contract with equipment manufacturers and other suppliers (of reagents, swabs, protective gear, etc.) for large capacity commitments on a short timeline.  I have no idea what this would cost or even if it is feasible, but if there is even a small chance that the epidemic will last for six months or return next winter, it seems that a $10 or $20 billion investment in testing capacity would be short money.

The Democrats should jump on this as they take up the next coronavirus response bill.  Not only is it good policy, it will give them an opportunity to highlight the fumbling, timid response of the Trump administration to the crisis.