Thread by @AbraarKaran

1/ So we know that we need to vaccinate a lot of people, preserve hospital capacity, & buy time

& we know that we have ⬆️ spread all over the country & even more w/ recent holiday travel

We need an emergency 🛑 on spread, w/ more drastic policy measures hbr.org/2020/08/the-u-…

2/ We need to implement absolute, not incremental, restrictions on nonessential venues. Those businesses need additional $$ protections in return. Anything that needs to remain open (grocery, pharmacies) needs to operate at regulated capacity w/ ⬆️protection for frontline staff

3/ Need to repurpose hotels/dorms etc as safer & better isolation & quarantine spaces; & $$ incentivize people to use them (punitive measures don’t work as well here & tend to become regressive)

Mandate masking in any indoor public space that remains open washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/0…

4/ Stop wasting time/energy harassing people outdoors (in places where weather even permits, keep beaches, playgrounds, parks etc open; the cost of restricting these —> people gathering indoors in private anyways which we can’t regulate without invading privacy)

5/ Schools are more complicated which others have debated in diff threads. Costs to children even in short term are large; benefits of closing primary schools on spread are unclear; would focus on the previous tweets before making strong assertion on schools. #covid19

6/ The biggest diff b/w benefits of “lockdowns” or w/e you want to call smarter epidemic policy now vs earlier?

Vaccines

We have a major deployment underway

We need to slow spread quickly; also need to repurpose large parts of workforce toward vaccine deployment #covid19

7/ And remember- if we have more LA county situations around the country, politicians will eventually be pushed to doing something drastic anyways bc people dying without ever making it into the hospital isn’t exactly going to win votes. Why wait until that happens? #covid19

Cc @CarlosdelRio7 @thehowie @gregggonsalves @rkwadhera @Bob_Wachter @RanuDhillon @rvenkayya @rajpanjabi @kj_seung @DFisman @johnbrownstein @IngridKatzMD @B_resnick @celinegounder @mtosterholm

This ⬇️⬇️ safer outdoor alternatives for social gathering is key to a sustainable plan over next few months - see thread above #covid19

https://twitter.com/rwidome/status/1345946751153405954

Made the same point here for the US ⬆️⬆️— biggest difference between these “lockdowns” & prior ones— > we have a vaccine; we have a tangible goal that we can reach. We need to slow spread #covid19

https://twitter.com/pippacrerar/status/1346186832300699648