Some COVID predictions.

1. I think we will see something approaching @balajis’s “Green Zones” in well-resourced, demarcated urban areas like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle even without border restrictions.

Boston and New York will have a harder time because ... 1/
The density of the Northeast corridor, the reliance on public transportation, the vertical nature of housing, and frankly their role as an EU travel hub.

The emergence of urban Green(ish) Zones will bring interstate Commerce Clause conflict and lawsuits on border enforcement. 2/
2. The entire US economic picture hinges on California.

California is the largest economy in the entire western hemisphere $ largest agricultural producer in the U.S. $21 billion in exports.

California’s agricultural output exceeds that of Iowa (#2) and Texas (#3) combined. 3/
3. Maintaining a COVID Green Zone is an incredible amount of work that is never-ending.

The Rᵗ of coronavirus (and its asymptomatic spread) requires massive testing, universal temperature checks, an army of contact tracers, social distancing, and smartphone tracing apps. 4/
4. Most people have absolutely NO appreciation for the sheer scale and sophistication of COVID Green Zone programs in countries like South Korea, Vietnam, NZ, China, and increasingly Australia.

India, Japan, and many African countries are already light years ahead of the U.S. 5/
5. The U.S. is falling victim to the colonialist conceit that other countries are succeeding only because:

• their citizens are sheeplike
• their leaders are autocratic
• they’re misreporting numbers
• they have geographical advantage
• they’re smaller

Very familiar. 6/
6. The reality is that countries achieving COVID Green Zone status are already showing that they can be MORE open.

It is already obvious that Green Zones will yield a more vibrant economy, with higher employment. Green Zone children will have a multi-year advantage in school. 7/
7. Every parent knows that we’re not really doing “remote learning” in U.S. schools.

We’re doing some kind of emergency, hastily cobbled-together fallback education plan.

We’re leaving a generation of American schoolchildren behind. Even more so for kids in poor districts. 8/
8. The science of COVID is inescapable. It’s far worse than the flu for adults, and it’ll be with us for years.

The mortality is bad enough, but talk to anyone who’s survived it

The idea of a vaccine being tested & broadly available in the next 24 months borders on fantasy. 9/
9. The latest seroprevalence results from around the world should be the final nail in the coffin on the “herd immunity” strategy.

Knowing what we know now, even putting grandparents aside, any suggestion that we should let this virus rip through the population is genocidal. 10/
10. The countries building COVID Green Zones understand the price of failure.

They know that any strategy short of total war on the virus is insanity.

They will not consign millions of their citizens to gruesome, preventable deaths, gasping for air, scared and all alone. 11/
11. Green Zone maintenance is a huge amount of work. You can open up, but don’t think the work stops and you can close the borders and not worry.

Look at South Korea. One infected person caused a cluster of dozens of infections, prompting a shutdown of Seoul’s bars & cafes. 12/
12. When Seoul reopened, they required every bar and restaurant in the city to register all patrons going forward.

Why? Because contact tracing is unbelievably labor intensive.

One superspreader having a night on the town caused ten thousand contact traces. 13/
13. Given that maintaining a COVID Green Zone is achievable, but expensive, why do it at all?

There are obvious moral reasons, but there are major economic benefits that these countries grasp.

Green Zone countries will create trade and tourism agreements with each other. 14/
14. COVID Green Zone countries will have another huge economic advantage over non-Green countries: certainty.

The market punishes uncertainty. COVID still has lots of unknowns.

Countries and states finance everything by selling bonds. If muni bond prices tank, you’re hosed. 15/
15. When markets are uncertain, investors flee to safe and liquid securities.

U.S. T Bonds have been a traditional storm shelter for investors.

But the $18T Treasury securities market has been dysfunctional since COVID began. If we don’t fix that, our economy is imperiled. 16/
16. Large states like California, Florida, Texas, and New York have the resources and incentives to build Green Zones in their urban areas.

CA and NY seem to have the political will. Not sure about FL and TX.

States who succeed can benefit immensely from muni bond prices. 17/
17. Some people underestimate the extent to which governments, especially US Federal and state governments, function on Treasury debt.

T bonds are our lifeblood. Further stimulus is impossible without Treasury debt. Same is true for the UK, which aims to borrow £180bn in Q3. 18/
18. This novel virus is... novel. It’s still early and there is a LOT we don’t know.

Long-term health effects. Birth defects? Fertility? Gain-of-function mutations?

When engineers and scientists face uncertainty, we’re taught to INCREASE safety margins, not reduce them! 19/
19. What countries like South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, and New Zealand are doing is purchasing certainty from COVID19.

Is certainty expensive? Very. But it’s a KNOWN price. You can build a plan around it.

Investors reward you for certainty. Rolling the dice is not a plan. 20/
20. As countries begin to see differentiated results based on their COVID policies, the marketplace of both ideas and money will converge on what works.

We know some countries have working strategies. It may take 2-3 months for other countries’ “earning reports” to come in. 21/
21. Right now, the uncertainty is providing a lot of cover for the “let’s hope COVID magically goes away” strategies.

As we progress, as South America heads into its winter, the results of national strategies will be laid bare.

Sept 1 will be a turning point in opinion. 22/
22. But the U.S. cannot afford to wait until mid-winter before we reach a critical mass of non-magical thinking.

States and cities are already acting. Los Angeles and San Francisco and Seattle already have big Green Zone plans in place, and the money to implement them. 23/
23. The constitutional challenges to pandemic measures are not as significant as the reopen protestors want to believe.

First, the majority of the population voluntarily (if reluctantly) supports the measures.

Second, Jacobson v. Massachusetts is clear. 24/
In 1905, in Jacobson v Massachusetts, the Supreme Court upheld the Cambridge, Mass, Board of Health’s authority to require vaccination against smallpox during a smallpox epidemic.

This article by @wendymariner, @georgejannas, and Leonard Glantz is great. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449224/
25. Because states have broad authority to legislate public health measures, we‘re about to see a LITERAL example of Brandeis’s maxim that states are “laboratories of democracy”.

Most government policies take a decade to show effects. COVID policies will unfold much faster. 26/
26. We have wide uncertainties in the natural course of COVID19 disease.

We have wide uncertainties in the effects of various relevant public health policies.

Risk management requires careful analysis of, and bounds, on downside risks.

Poorly-bounded downsides are bad. 27/
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