OK, something different from me in the forthcoming National Review. I call for a national mobilization to implement mass testing and isolation (voluntary) in order to avoid crises of joblessness, poverty, and opportunity. https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/11/16/at-home-covid-19-testing-why-we-need-it/

I've been getting asked all year what is the most important antipoverty policy during the pandemic. Much of the antipoverty community, I think, is stuck in 2019, debating expansions to SNAP or UI or what-have-you. UBI, payroll tax cuts...so beside-the-point. Stimulus? Really?

The most important thing is that we get back to the fantastic 2019 economy we had. To do that, Americans need to feel like they can safely return to their 2019 ways of life, and that won't happen until the pandemic is under control.

We're a ways off from a vaccine. Waiting for it passively will have awful consequences. Joblessness will remain at bad recession levels, poverty will continue to rise, kids' schooling outcomes will continue to suffer, and potentially severe inequality of opportunity will result.

I agree with the @paulmromer position that in lieu of a vaccine, we must implement a mass testing-and-isolation program. That would require a national mobilization--real sacrifice, which the broad American populace has not been asked to make for a long time.

But because it would require that we do something big together, such a program could start to heal some of the social rifts that have worsened so much in 2020. Insert your John-Lennon-Imagine joke here, but I think it's past time not to be cynical.

Anyway, I'm outside my lane a bit writing on public health. But there is no question that controlling the virus should be the top priority for anyone concerned about poverty or opportunity. I've tried to think hard about this, and this is what I've come up with.

I will say that skeptical conservatives should consider that a principled commitment to mass testing and isolation--no tracing, no mandates--would be FAR cheaper than rolling trillion-dollar relief/stimulus bills in 2021. It is soft-hearted AND hard-headed.

Hope you find it interesting and valuable, and I hope you'll consider the merits of the proposal. Thanks. https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/11/16/at-home-covid-19-testing-why-we-need-it/