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The best kinds of economic stimulus right now are those that directly fight the human toll from the coronavirus.
Examples include using federal money to build temporary medical facilities, buy ventilators and spur production of millions of virus tests. All of which may not only save lives but also hasten the day when life — and, by extension, economic activity — can return to normal. These measures have the additional benefit of doing what more traditional forms of stimulus do: Provide income and jobs at a time when both are badly needed.
“The most important thing you can do for the economy is slow the virus or show it has a lower bound,” the economist Austan Goolsbee has written. “Pay sick not to work, buy ventilators, test/isolate. Nothing works until you get a handle on this.”
Unfortunately, the federal government is not nearly focused enough on these kinds of measures.
From Christopher Rowland of The Washington Post:
Hospitals are holding back from ordering more medical ventilators because of the high cost for what may be only a short-term spike in demand from the coronavirus epidemic, supply chain experts and health researchers say, intensifying an anticipated shortage of lifesaving equipment for patients who become critically ill. …
Ventilator manufacturers could achieve, within a few months, a significant boost in production from about 50,000 units a year currently, said Julie Letwat, a health-care lawyer with McGuireWoods in Chicago who is monitoring the industry. Orders have not flooded in, she said, because most hospitals can’t afford to increase inventory of expensive equipment for what could turn out to be a short-term event.
Hospitals’ hesitance to order ventilators is a problem that only the government can solve. It’s certainly true that the purchase and production of additional ventilators may turn out to be a money loser for some hospitals and companies. But the country needs additional ventilator capacity now. To Washington, the cost is practically a rounding error, relative to the stimulus sums — hundreds of billions of dollars — now being discussed.
Can you think of a better stimulus idea than erring on the side of buying too many ventilators?
For more …
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Officials in some other countries seem to be reacting with the right level of aggressiveness. The Trump administration once again is reacting too slowly. “Canada, Germany and other countries are frantically trying to line up new ventilators,” my colleague Nicholas Kristof wrote. “A U.S. company that makes ventilators says it could increase production five fold — but the U.S. hasn’t placed an order.”
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A New York Times story notes that stepped-up production may still not be sufficient to deal with the coming surge in patients, and the story adds:
… some European governments are deploying wartime-mobilization tactics to get factories churning out more ventilators — and to stop domestic companies from exporting them.
The United States, by contrast, has been slow to develop a national strategy for accelerating the production of ventilators. That appears to reflect in part the federal government’s sluggish reaction to the coronavirus, with President Trump and others initially playing down the threat. This week, Mr. Trump urged governors to find ways to procure new ventilators. “Try getting it yourselves,” he said.
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Aaron Carroll of Indiana University notes in The Upshot that the United States now has about 160,000 ventilators available in hospitals. If this pandemic resembles the 1918 Spanish flu in its severity, “we would need more than 740,000,” he writes.
The Argument podcast
On the new episode, Michelle Goldberg and I talk with Jeneen Interlandi — the Times editorial board’s lead health writer — about how long the crisis is likely to last, and Michelle and I also discuss the dangerous possibility that this November’s election will be disrupted.
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Too Many Ventilators? - The New York Times
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