The Solution?

President Trump has not ... at least for the nonce ... criticize the CDC ... probably because he needs them to perform well dealing with  this Wuhan virus epidemic. But the early screwups there with our testing apparatus has clearly set us back in our virus battle by a least a month ... see: Propublica Story.

However, particularly by partnering with the private sector, the Trump administration has apparently squeaked through this bottleneck as testing has ramped up dramatically. And as a result, the number of cases, particularly in New York, has soared. This is not a bad thing. This is good thing for now we can isolate these infected people without totally shutting down our whole economy ... mimicking the South Korea model of dealing with this pandemic ... not the Wuhan solution of a total shutdown  ... see: Yahoo News Article.

So the Trump “15-day” solution to this problem is emerging from the fog of war. That is — suppress economic activity until we fix the CDC’s testing f-up ... and use the power of the Federal Reserve Bank and the federal purse to ease the financial pain of this slowdown. Then, as our testing and medical solutions ramp up (such as the anti-malaria drugs), isolate those identified virus cases ... which enables the reawakening of much of our economic machinery. The economic ramp-up will depend upon where in this 15-day window we can confidently say we have an arm-lock on the COVID-19 contagion.

Why hasn’t Trump fully communicated this approach? Well, for one, he can’t rely on the media to candidly report on these steps. And secondly, plenty of things can go wrong in this approach. His administration needs to be nimble under these circumstances ... and change tactics if necessary.