Stimulus for Tests

The Covid-19 problem is ultimately an epistemic problem. That is, the pandemic could end in a week if we simply knew exactly who had it. If every person infected with Covid gave off a big red glow, those people would quarantine themselves (and we would avoid them, literally like the plague), not infect anyone else, and then the virus would have no hosts to carry it on.

It’s for this reason that so many bright minds, such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Romer, have hammered home the importance of an efficient testing system. If testing were widespread enough, that would be a terrific substitute for lockdowns, closures, and masking. A possible proposal: instead of having the government send out stimulus checks with no strings attached, why not make them contingent on weekly testing? That is, you go to a testing booth (perhaps private contractors?) and in exchange for your getting tested for Covid, the government releases the check. That would both have the stimulative effect they are looking for by sending out the checks, but also have much of the epistemic “cure” for the virus that we are looking for.