When Can We Go Out? Evaluating Policy Paradigms for Responding to the COVID-19 Threat

This paper seeks (1) to explain why public officials in the U.S. are having such difficulty addressing the question of a timetable for their imposition of collective quarantine orders; (2) to explain the two available viable policy approaches and timetables for bringing the COVID-19 pandemic under control (rather than, as on a third possible approach, simply allowing it to run its course); and (3) to argue for the superiority of one approach and timetable, namely, the one we call “Mobilize and Transition,” which contrasts to a timetable we call “Freeze in Place” and also to the third approach, which we call “Surrender.” In the case of COVID19, our under-preparation for a coronavirus pandemic (in contrast to an influenza pandemic) requires that we fold what should have been a stage of activity undertaken prior to an outbreak into our current efforts to fight the pandemic. This highlights the importance of the mobilization concept. We should understand ourselves as needing simultaneously to meet the requirements of interval 4 and interval 6 in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Pandemic Interval Framework. This requires an intensification of investment of resources—financial, human, industrial, and organizational.