The United States could save $46 trillion in economic and social losses by moving to a smart containment strategy involving aggressive testing and tracing. That’s according to UVA economists Anton Korinek and Zach Bethune, who spoke with PPI’s Mike Mandel on our weekly online discussion on Friday. The economic and social benefits from smart containment are so large, by their calculations, that it makes sense to pay for a virtual army of workers to do testing and tracing. By contrast, choosing the “herd immunity” strategy leads to a deep recession, slow recovery, and many lost lives.
