I'd like to see an article which consults two or more academicians with skills in mathematical epidemiology and economics and asks them to provide a realistic estimate of the costs in lives and dollars, to the US Economy, of the Trump administration's failure to prioritize massive scale-up of testing in January. Costs would include extra lost work time of dozens or hundreds of millions of people above the base case, extra medical care, reduced federal tax receipts and related increased federal borrowing and higher interest expenses, higher stimulus package and increased borrowing and higher interest expenses, bankruptcies of businesses and the aftermath, increased layoffs above the baseline case. Possibly as well there should be some attempt at calculating costs of the equity and debt market disruption and sell-offs, but perhaps that water is too muddy. Perhaps calculate how much lower the GDP for 2020 will be in the US than for a baseline COVID19 case handled reasonably well.

In the end, I think the final numbers for extra costs (above what we would have had to deal with) will be in the dozens or hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention extra lives lost, not to mention lasting health damage to some of those extra victims of the illness.

Supposedly this President and his supporters are advocates of financial prudence and are "pro-business". How is that exactly? I'm not quite seeing it.