What Biden’s COVID Plan should be

This is what Biden’s COVID containment plan should be. If he does it, he can contain COVID before his first 100 days are over.

Biden has proposed good actions so far with his COVID 19 priority list. But he needs to commit to these to maximize rapid impact.

We need a good plan. Credit: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images

Who am I? I lead Lyft’s Health Safety Program. I have made Lyft even safer as its founding hire for safety & risk technology. Previously, I helped make 911 be smarter as the founder of Patronus (sold to RapidSOS who powers Apple’s 911 calling). My actions have helped save over 6,000 lives and helped tens of millions of people be safer.

What Biden needs to immediately do and not do

Do:

1. Implement an enforceable mask wearing mandate. Biden is proposing a mask mandate that will be locally reinforced. But it should include punitive consequences for those few who don’t wear one. Those who don’t wear a mask are actively harming others — the same way that punching someone is actively harming others. Passing this law and reinforcing it will dramatically improve mask compliance, which could save 100,000 lives.
2. Improve medicare reimbursement for fast COVID test results. Test results take too long right now with many taking over 3 days. We should have 24 hour turnaround times if not 20 minute times. Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest insurers in the country and so they can single handedly accelerate turnaround times by setting better incentives. If tests take a long time, they should pay less.
3. Stockpile test supplies. We don’t have enough tests right now so hospitals and clinics are needing to triage who can get them. In turn, we may be exacerbating asymptomatic transmission. This is an unnecessary constraint that they plan to address.
4. Create a common contact tracing data structure. By creating a common data structure, we create a common language for contact tracing efforts. This will enable faster analysis of hot spot trends and thus faster action to contain them. As an example, every contact tracing report should capture how many people were at the point of infection, whether it was inside or outside, if masks were worn, and the activity being conducted.

Don’t:

1. Undermine your public health authorities. The public needs clarity right now. The inconsistency is causing confusion, frustration, and poor behavior. The erosion of the CDC cannot continue. Trump’s consistent undermining of Fauci isn’t helpful and leads to attacks like this.
2. Slow down vaccine or therapeutic efforts. Project Warpspeed has catalyzed great progress. While a vaccine won’t be widely available by end of year, there’s clearly a great pipeline coming. This needs to be kept as a vaccine will continue to help.

The future big move, if needed

Doing the actions above will curtail the virus’s growth. But it still may not be fast enough, especially with winter driving people indoors. Biden should use the weather change to his advantage. He should do a weeklong national lockdown in February during which each household gets tested.

This is bold and doable.

First, a date needs to be set. I would propose February 1st, 2021. 2/1/21.

Then, essential workers need to be tested ahead of time. This is to ensure the right people are in place to ensure a safe lockdown and testing process. Police officers, delivery workers, healthcare workers, etc.

Then there needs to be enough tests and facilities to test everybody. If we test one person from each household, that would be roughly 100M tests. Hence the importance of those stockpiled tests.

If a household’s test comes back negative, their lockdown ends at the end of that week. They will need proof of a negative test result.

If a household’s test comes back positive, every member will need to quarantine for two weeks and the government should ensure their wage protection. If 3 million households come back positive, at the national average of $1,321 per week, it is a $7.9B expense to cover their wages. Much smaller than the $2T CARES Act.

By doing this, we’ll truly identify where the outbreak is, keep people equitably safe if they are infected, and improve everyone’s quality of life.

Good, aggressive government policy can help us contain this pandemic.