How do we reopen American society in a way that keeps people safe but also puts them back to work and school?
One of the most realistic and workable plans comes from a team of policy analysts led by Avik Roy, the president of the Austin, Texas-based Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. Even without widespread testing, a vaccine, or a cure, they argue that we should reopen schools and allow healthy, younger employees to go back to work because COVID-19 kills mostly older people who can be protected without shutting everything down.
Roy tells Nick Gillespie that the “massive expansion of government creates a further drag on the economy” that is mostly invisible to D.C. bureaucrats and commentators. “The more we lock down the economy, the more we harm those individuals who are most vulnerable, who don’t have the cash cushions or the white-collar jobs that allow them to keep going,” he says, even as he remains hopeful that many regulations that have been suspended during the pandemic will never return.
Audio production by Ian Keyser.
Photo credit: Bastiaan Slabbers/ZUMA/Newscom
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