How We Recover From This.

Readers Note: Basically, this is my 'all beef and no filler' list of recommendations to overcome and recover from Covid-19. After reading an exhaustive list of articles, I grew tired of long expositions that concluded with one or maybe two actual recommendations. Here instead, I listed all of the most salient recommendations and spent significantly less time on the empirical or logical defenses for each (because that is what links are for).

Let's break it down. While fighting this Pandemic isn’t a war in the traditional sense, it is affecting our way of life in many ways that mirror a war. It has decimated our economies, left us anxious, scared and isolated. It has also left so many hardworking people without jobs or hope.

Covid-19 isn’t a single crisis, it is three crises rolled into one:

1. A Pandemic that will likely kill millions
2. An economic recession that if left unchecked could evolve into a depression
3. A crisis of hopelessness and isolation that will affect the mental health of multiple generations

By separating the crisis into three separate parts we can design strategies to address each one. This article is meant to be a wire-frame for outlining (an admittedly large number) of strategies to address each crisis.

Realistically, almost every one of these strategies could probably be an entire article on its own, click the links if you want more 'why' behind the 'what'.

First, we need a clear and actionable strategy to deal with the Pandemic itself. Outlined here are 9 broad strategies. All of the strategies listed here are hugely important in securing success. Therefore, instead of ordering them by priority, I have ordered them in a roughly 'longitudinal' fashion. If it were based on priority, the list would have started with universal testing as most important. As this list is ordered now, think of it more as a 'recipe' where 1 precedes 2 (don't interpret that 1 is more important than 2).

1. Enacting a national emergency now. The rules across provinces need to be standardized, so that we can keep track of them as they continue to change. This is particularly important for those who live on the borders of states or provinces.
2. Large medical investments for vaccines and treatments. There are multiple companies with promising treatment and vaccine solutions in various stages of testing. Countries should be actively tracking and negotiating deals with these firms that should include direct investments and the ability to buy stock options.
3. Buying time through Social distancing. There is a massive amount of literature on this topic. Ultimately, social distancing is a delay tactic and even with this approach we may experience a second or even third wave that could be just as devastating. Realistically, we are 18 to 24 months from a vaccine. Social distancing is our best bet to save the most lives possible until medical science can offer better solutions (either through vaccines, better treatments or increased capacity).
4. Organizing industry and labour to make crucial medical supplies. This is already happening on some levels, but the government needs help garnering attention to their efforts and they need more powerful tools to force manufactures to participate.
5. Building field hospitals. We need to immediately set up separate structures for those with Covid-19. Allowing coronavirus into our hospitals is "like throwing a lit match on a haystack". The armed forces, private industry and an organized workforce of those recently unemployment should be leveraged to build field hospitals in sports centers, theaters and arenas to prepare for the extra demands on healthcare resources.
6. Controlling the spread with extensive/universal testing and contact tracing. For example, the federal government of Canada just signed deals with Spartan Bioscience Inc., an Ottawa-based company that produces a hand-held DNA analyzer that can provide COVID-19 test results in about 30 minutes. The next step is to mobilize this capability to return our country to work. The steps to achieve this are: Announce and communicate clearly the plans to use these tests and how it will be done, Retrofit vehicles to accommodate this task, Employ and train from the millions who have been forced onto E.I., Shut-down public transit and limit travel to a defined radius, Begin mobile testing at ALL essential services businesses, Go house to house or create drive-thrus (in order to avoid creating lines). Finally, neighborhoods, cities, and then the entire geographies get cleared in sequence.
7. Antibody testing. Now that Antibody tests will soon be available at scale, these tests need to be administered as widely as possible per the same method as in pt 6. This is an extremely important step. First it will enable us to begin to understand how long our immune system ‘memory’ lasts for Covid-19 and therefore how frequently vaccines would need to be administered. Secondly, it informs us of the risks for re-infection and therefore the size of potential secondary ‘waves’ of infection. Thirdly, it helps to understand how the duration of an outbreak affects the viability of ‘herd immunity’.
8. Enforced isolation orders. We need those on isolation orders to be monitored and provided for (through services like grocery delivery).
9. Ongoing monitoring strategies. Randomized ongoing tests to enable us to gather statistically robust samples that allow us to project actual infection rates over-time and to quickly isolate and control new hot spots.

Then we need a strategy to recover from the economic and political fallout. This list of 6 items is meant to focus on things we can put in place now to minimize the economic fallout later and/or speed recovery. While certain things like the stimulus and business support programs recently enacted are 'current', things further down this list include protections for when we begin to recover or fully recover (like Term Limits, or Public Works). Again, this isn't a fully exhaustive list, this is meant to represent the most urgent and relevant strategies we should pursue.

1. The current stimulus and business support programs are a good start, but not yet sufficient. How we will support our burgeoning high-growth tech sector for instance, if yet to be seen. The current requirement for -30% VYA for instance will have broad and devastating implications if not addressed. We need to act with some urgency, and we need to keep it simple and not complicate it in a crisis. What comes next is a big question that someone in government needs to start considering sooner than later. We need to start anticipating now what will happen to business when we begin to recover, and how we will prepare to dig ourselves out of this economic hole?
2. Realistic timelines shared now (not later). Stop telling us ‘at least’ and start being honest. 6 months may sound terrible, but it’s better to hear it now than a new limbo every 14 days. Businesses need to build strategies for how to manage their cash and develop plans for restarting, unrealistically optimistic timelines won't help these companies plan.
3. A sovereign fund built on direct investments in medical technologies, and the nations largest components of GDP. Governments should not only be investing to back the research, but negotiating things like stock-options tied to their investments to offset the giant deficits that they must incur right now. We need to address the current health and economic crises but also be intelligent about how we will dig ourselves out of the deficits and recessions we are experiencing. 
4. A more aggressive economic expansion policy. We need to leverage all of the tools in the governments arsenal when this crisis is over. No pipeline can be allowed to be stopped again by protesters. 
5. Term Limits: Don’t forget that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
6. A Public Works agenda like under FDR: Nations need a way to organize the millions who are unemployed or laid-off. They could employ those people now forced into unemployment to: collect samples, to produce ventilators, to analyze contact tracing data (credit card receipts, etc...), go grocery shopping for those in isolation or those who can’t shop and feed themselves without breaking isolation orders, etc... After the crisis is over, there will continue to be rebuilding efforts needed to recover the economy and rebuild manufacturing capabilities and distribution networks.

Finally we need to address the psychological effects that this crisis will have on the population. This final list focuses on what government and other leaders can do to remove uncertainty and anxiety. There will doubtless be other psychological effects that need to be dealt with, but those will require proper consultation with mental health professionals and social programs. This list is meant to highlight what we can do now to limit the immediate psychological damage.

1. Building trust through honesty of words and action. During the Spanish Flu Pandemic many lost hope and trust in government due to unclear messaging and the government's role in withholding important information. We need a clear and knowledge-based voice of reason from a unified government. We need to believe that there is a plan. Many of us are in grief right now. Hope comes when people see strong leadership with a clear plan. Even when times are dark, strong leadership allows us to see the path forward.
2. Leadership that provides a vision of hope. We need a leader like Churchill during WWII. This is not the time for sensitivity alone, it is the time for action and inspiration. We need a leader who will provide us with a new sense of national and international unity. That can only happen by reaching across the political divide and stopping the partisan games. A strong plan now allows us to share a vision for what comes next. That vision is the light at the end of the tunnel. If we can see that light, we will do what’s needed to get there.
3. Maintaining Unity. The aftermath of the coronavirus is likely to create a more aggressive phase of class warfare. People will see the extent to which rich, well-connected and well-resourced communities will have been taken care of, while contingent, poor and stigmatized communities will have been thoroughly destroyed. The government must be careful not to further incite this with divisive policies and convenient scapegoating. Inequities need to be addressed, but in a way that doesn't destroy our national unity.
4. A Home Front initiative. When people feel that conditions are out of their control it exacerbates the underlying feelings of anxiety and hopelessness they are already experiencing due to the crisis. Citizens need a chance to contribute in meaningful ways to our national effort. In-fact ‘helping’ and helping others is one of the most powerful ways to increase general happiness. The 2019 World Happiness Report devotes an entire chapter to what it calls ‘Prosocial Behaviour’ (actions we take to help others). The report identifies three conditions under which happiness is maximized: They feel free to choose whether or how to help, They feel connected to the people they are helping, They can see how their help is making a difference. It is this last condition that is most relevant to the current crisis. Citizens need to see how they can make a meaningful difference (beyond just staying home). During WWII the ‘Home Front’ initiatives allowed those not involved directly with the war effort to contribute in meaningful ways. A simple example would be that as an alternative to rationing, Americans planted “victory gardens,” in which they grew their own food. By 1945, some 20 million such gardens were in use and accounted for about 40 percent of all vegetables consumed in the U.S. Finding ways for regular citizens to contribute in overcoming this crisis will not only create a powerful labor pool, but also contribute positively to the mental health of the nation.

At the end of the Spanish Flu epidemic the pent-up demand of people to enjoy life again was part of what led to the Roaring Twenties. While most economists predict a much more protracted recovery from the Covid-19 Pandemic, it is important to consider that there are still things we can do now in order to speed that recovery. Those include: controlling the spread of the current outbreak, investing intelligently in treatments and vaccines, supporting business to avoid lay-offs and bankruptcies, employing the unemployed to help with the 'war effort', and building trust and instilling confidence in an anxious and grieving public.

The more educated we are as a group, the more able we will be to judge the policies and strategies that our government adopts through and after the crisis. While, formal plans have yet to be clearly communicated for what comes next, let's hope that in the absence of an actual plan, our governments have at least started working from something similar.

Finally, influence often matters more than the strength of your ideas - I'm hoping to build more traffic for this article in order to provide both. If you agree with what I have outlined above, please share, like, comment, borrow or appropriate as you see fit.