COVID-19: James Bullard, President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank: Americans will wear a badge to show that they’ve been tested
https://www.stlouisfed.org/from-the-president/video-appearances/2020/bullard-outlook-us-unemployment-cbs
Bullard Discusses Outlook for U.S. Unemployment on CBS
April 5, 2020
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard shared his perspectives on the impact of the partial economic shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. He also talked about the recent fiscal relief package, which is intended to keep everybody whole during this period, during an interview on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” . . .
Video with just the quoted segment below after about 6 minutes into interview:
https://twitter.com/QAnonNotables/status/1247068602026446849 (post from April 6, 2020)
Host:
Do you think that this global economy is going to look the same on the other side of this pandemic? Are those jobs actually going to exist for people to go back to?
Bullard:
You know I have good news for you, Margaret. Because there is a solution using available technology today to fix the economic part of this problem. The solution is universal testing. What you want is every single person to get tested every day. And then they would wear a badge like they would after they voted or something like that to show that they’ve been tested. This would immediately sort out who has been infected and who hasn’t been infected. That would help the health care sector, but it would also help the economy because we could interact with each other with a lot of confidence.
Another interview:
https://www.stlouisfed.org/from-the-president/media-interviews/2020/bullard-mitigate-crisis-cepr
Bullard Discusses Testing to Mitigate the Crisis during CEPR Interview
April 16, 2020
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard shared his views on the second quarter of 2020 and discussed the idea of universal coronavirus testing to help mitigate the crisis. He made his remarks during a video podcast with the Centre for Economic Policy Research.
Bullard noted that the second quarter of 2020 is basically being written off on purpose to invest in health due to the pandemic. “You’re intentionally slowing down the pace of production of output, and you’re intentionally trying to tell workers to stay at home or use the unemployment insurance program as pandemic relief,” he said, adding that those are objectives during the second quarter.
He estimated that the shutdown policy is costing about $25 billion per day in the U.S. To help mitigate the crisis, he noted that a solution using available technology is to have testing everywhere. “I think that would stop the crisis in its tracks,” he said, “and with these kind of numbers, there’s no reason we can’t set up a pop-up type industry that does exactly this.”
Bullard noted that testing would allow people to pinpoint where the virus is all the time, which would restore confidence. “You have to build the confidence that it’s OK to go back out and participate in the economy the way you normally would,” he said.
He likened the situation to the presence of a shark near the beach. “There’s a shark in the water, and people aren’t going to go back to the beach until you really show them a reason to believe that the shark isn’t in the water anymore,” he said
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HxSvf7VhgU
The surveillance part of this April 16 interview starts at 13m 12
Rough transcript from YouTube:
A lot of things you can do . . . would normally be considered way out of bounds:
13:12
a simple solution I think we
available technology not not waiting for
a miracle happen with available
technologies just to have ubiquitous
testing everywhere that you could get a
test the same way you can get a cup of
coffee I actually checked on the numbers
number of cups of coffee the US economy
13:33
produces every day and it it’s on the
right order of magnitude like several
hundred million also eggs I took time
there’s an egg every day for every
person in the US so so if you can
produce other things like that then what
you should do is produce tasks the same
way now we wouldn’t normally think of
that that isn’t the normal thing but
that is what you should do we have
14:00
simple 15-minute tests that could be
produced and if you’re worried about it
or you think you might be sick or you
want to prove to someone else that
you’re not sick you can just go take
this test and be done with it I think
that would stop the crisis in its tracks
and with these kind of numbers there’s
no reason we can’t set up a pop up type
industry that does exactly this so one
idea of add is that the government could
say if you’re if you pop up a factory to
produce tests we’ll pay all your
14:31
production costs and you guys can if you
can sell these tests anywhere you can
sell these tests for at any price that’s
pure profit to you I think if I have my
economics right that they’ll produce
right up until that they get one penny
for each test and then you’ll be totally
satiated in tests and so I think
something like that would be the right
response to this because it is a little
tricky for producers to think about
whether they really want to produce
these tests or not given that maybe a
15:01
vaccine will come out at some point and
the tests will be worthless so so I
think there’s interesting economics
there but that’s where we should put our
energy and and with these crazy numbers
and crazy costs around this really
draconian response to the to the
pandemic there are a lot of things that
you can do they you know you would
normally be considered way out of bounds
but you might do them in this
certain Stan’s poking of crazy numbers
15:32
. . .18:57
believe that the shark isn’t in the
water anymore and I think it’s only the
19:00
testing which will allow us to pinpoint
exactly where the virus is all the time
all everywhere you know that’s the kind
of thing that would restore confidence
and allow us to live with the virus
until we get a vaccine or
therapeutic that would that would get
rid of this well it is very interesting
in this crisis to find out how important
it is to be creative about policy and
how important clear communication is in
19:30
affecting both what happens now and as
. . .