From PYMNTS:
The U.S. economy would be best served if the nation were to be locked down for up to six weeks, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari advised.....MORE
In a CBS interview on “Face the Nation” Sunday (Aug. 2), Kashkari said the country can rebound, but only if the virus is controlled.
“If we were to lock down really hard, I know I hate to even suggest it, people will be frustrated by it,” he told the network. “But if we were to lock down hard for a month or six weeks, we could get the case count down so that our testing and our contact tracing was actually enough to control it the way that it’s happening in the Northeast right now.”
Without such bold action, Kashkari said, the virus is likely to spread with flare ups and geographic lockdowns for the next year or two.
“We’re going to see many, many more business bankruptcies, small businesses, big businesses, and that’s going to take a lot of time to recover from to rebuild those businesses and then to bring workers back in and re-engage them in the workforce,” he said. “That’s going to be a much slower recovery for all of us.”
Kashkari took issue with Republican claims that extending the $600 weekly federal unemployment benefit, which expired last week, is discouraging laid off workers to find a job.
“When we get the unemployment rate eventually back down to 5 percent, and we want to get it back down to 4 percent or 3.5 percent where it was before, yes, that disincentive to work becomes material,” he said. “But right now, it’s simply not a factor in the macro economy that we have in the U.S. because we have so many millions of Americans out of work.”...
We asked if America was willing to match China in lockdown severity on three occasions and the answer was, even in hard lockdown California, NO!
February 25If the U.S. wanted to do that the time to do so was in December 2019. But China didn't tell anyone what was going on and when they did let the bat out of the bag it was too late.
Doin' It China Style: Should The West Emulate China's Approach To Containing Coronavirus?
Again on March 7th:
So the question remains:
Is it time to quarantine the city of Seattle?
March 23
Is The West Ready To Adopt Chinese-Style Lockdowns?
Even quarantining New York in March would only have slowed the spread to Florida and other points south and west.
So it looks as if we're back to having the virus run it's course as we try to protect the most vulnerable.
Which has been the response to viruses for as long as humans have been around.
So...wear a mask, don't kiss grandma, wash your hands and don't stand so close to me.
