1/n Ask yourself...what would FDR do? He would hire a million workers and train them for contact tracing, sanitation, and other public health tasks. Kill two birds with one stone: create jobs and contain the virus.

2/n He would call it the Wuhan Progress Administration (WPA) because such language is bipartisan 🙃 Cost would be a small fraction of the trillion dollar stimulus package.

3/n We could stop listening to pundits telling us that containment is no longer possible. A million public health workers would take care of it.

4/n Many people have come to the conclusion that lockdown is necessary. But don't be naive and think that some weeks/months of lockdown will solve our problem. Lockdown is only the first step...it gives us time to implement containment.

5/n The Imperial College report argues that mitigation w/o containment will fail, because lifting the restrictions w/o containment will lead to another outbreak.

6/n So hire a million public health workers. People who can't work at their restaurant/bar jobs. College students who can't get summer internships. All the people struggling to find decent employment could have a job that pays well and feels meaningful.

7/n All you need is mobile phone and internet. Work from home. Call the patient. Call the contacts. Call in the sanitation team.

8/n NYC had 1351 new cases today. Every one of them needs contact tracing.

@SebastianSeung Or maybe treatments and even prophylaxis with candidates like chloroquine, remdesivir, favipiravir, etc may allow us to flatten (or even remove area from) the curve without distancing? plus cheap/rapid (<15 min) testing maybe a few months away best case scenario

@TonyZador Interesting idea...but couldn't there be side effects of those drugs? Is anyone planning prophylaxis for health care workers? They're at risk, so side effects might be a small price to pay for protection.

@SebastianSeung Without further data regarding the build up of immunity within a population you'd just be sending thousands of already underpaid workers to their deaths. This is a moment to think about alternatives that are equalitarian and science based.

@SebastianSeung Sebastian, none of this can work unless we can dramatically increase our testing capabilities. Once you have a complete list of people who had been in contact with a specific diagnosed patient, what do you do? Call in the sanitation team, you say. To do what, if they cannot test?