Incremental Policy Can’t Keep Up With Exponential Spread
England is significantly expanding Covid-19 restrictions and the U.S. should follow suit
It’s become increasingly clear that we need to vaccinate a lot of people, preserve hospital capacity, and buy time to stop the pandemic. We know that we have an exponentially increasing spread of Covid-19 all over the country, and there will be even more with recent holiday travel and gatherings.
England has announced a new national lockdown due to a surge of cases and hospitalizations related to the new, more transmissible B117 variant. The United States needs to do the same, urgently, before spread overwhelms more parts of the country as it currently has in Los Angeles County.
We need an emergency plan to stop spread with more drastic policy measures. We had authored the framework for such a plan — termed “Smarter Lockdowns” — over the summer. Many of these points still hold today, and we don’t need to call them “lockdowns” because the point is being smart about stopping spread, not restricting people blindly.
We need to implement absolute — not incremental — restrictions on nonessential venues, including restaurants, bars, gyms, and shopping areas. Those businesses will need additional financial protections in the short run…
