By Doug Badger and Norbert Michel ~
COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to surge. The seven-day moving average of daily confirmed new cases eclipsed 260,000 on Jan. 9, the highest rate yet recorded. The U.S. is expected to reach the grim milestone of 400,000 COVID-related deaths later this month, around the anniversary of its first confirmed case.
These numbers suggest that the strategy of relying predominantly on social distancing, lockdowns, and mask-wearing is not working. We need better interventions.

A man wears a double mask as he visits Times Square in New York Dec. 10, 2020. President-elect Joe Biden says he will ask Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of his administration to curtail the spread of the coronavirus. (Photo: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images)
Some have called for national mask mandates. We recently examined the effects of mask mandates in the U.S. and Italy, and our findings are not encouraging.
Of the 25 U.S. counties reporting the highest number of new cases during the current surge, 21 had mask mandates in place before August. Looking at the 100 counties with the most confirmed cases during this period, 97 had either a county-level mask mandate, a state-level mandate, or both. Of these 97 counties, 87 instituted their mandates prior to October.
Mask mandates failed to prevent a surge in cases in other countries as well. Italy enforces a national mask mandate, imposing fines of up to 1,000 euros. That mandate did not prevent a surge of cases that began in October and peaked in mid-November. As of early January, Italy was still recording new infections at four times the early October rate.
What’s the best way for America to reopen and return to business? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, assembled America’s top thinkers to figure that out. So far, it has made more than 260 recommendations. Learn more here.
Our findings do not deny the efficacy of mask-wearing. Nor should they discourage the practice. Public health authorities in the U.S. and throughout the world cite studies showing that mask-wearing slows the pathogen’s rate of spread.
Although mask-wearing may reduce transmission rate, it has not prevented cases from spiking either here or abroad.
Governments should pursue additional strategies. These include adopting better measures to protect nursing home residents and enabling nationwide screening through the widespread use of rapid self-tests.
The U.S. and other governments have done an abysmal job at protecting nursing home patients. As of Jan. 7, U.S. nursing home residents accounted for less than 0.5% of COVID-19 cases but 37% of COVID-related deaths.
Cases and deaths continue to mount even as the process of vaccinating residents and staff has begun. The current federal policy of requiring weekly tests of staff and temporal thermometer screenings of visitors is inadequate. Government should require daily testing of staff, at least until all residents and staff have been immunized. Visitors should be tested before entering the facility.
Government should also take steps to protect the general population. The distribution of rapid, at-home tests that don’t require a prescription or laboratory analysis would inform people of their COVID-19 status and limit the disease’s transmission.
The technology exists to produce low-cost, rapid home tests in sufficient volume for tens of millions of Americans to test themselves daily. Unfortunately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved these tests. The agency’s concern is that self-administered, in-home tests are less sensitive than laboratory-analyzed tests used for clinical diagnosis. This view allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
Acknowledging this, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently embraced the notion of “flooding the system with tests, getting a home test that you could do yourself, that’s highly sensitive and highly specific.”
Rapid tests are marginally less accurate, but that is more than offset by their volume (testing tens of millions of people daily, as opposed to 2 million), frequency (people can test themselves often), and immediacy (results within minutes, rather than days).
Unlike mask-wearing and lockdown edicts, widespread self-testing is neither culturally nor politically divisive, making it more likely to gain population-wide acceptance. It combats the contagion by empowering and informing people, not confining them, restricting their activities and suggesting that they are to blame for the spread of a contagious pathogen.
Equipping people to make the best decisions for themselves, their families, and their fellow citizens offers a promising new approach to combating the pandemic.
Originally published by The Washington Times
Doug Badger is a former White House and Senate policy adviser and is currently a senior fellow at the Galen Institute and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/
Norbert Michel studies and writes about housing finance, including the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and he is the research fellow in financial regulations at The Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/
Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal http://dailysignal.com/
gds44
Sat 01/16/2021
Reblogged this on Gds44's Blog.
LikeLiked by 2 people
PA Pundits - International
Sat 01/16/2021
Look at Sweden with NO Lockdowns, NO Masks, NO UnSocial Distancing now has few CCP flu cases now AND with a lower Death Toll per million than the USA and others!
They are doing what we used to do before the anti-American Democrats-Socialists-Marxist and their Media and Tech Sycophants (Parasites) started to spread Lies about this so called “crisis”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
nickreality65
Sat 01/16/2021
One might say there is a trend, but a “surge” – not so much.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_totalandratecases
Toggle the radio buttons for deaths and cases and trends, totals, rates, etc.
80% of the CASES occur in those UNDER 65 while 80% of the DEATHS occur in those OVER 65. See linked CDC site & tab “demographics.”
And there has been little change in the overall stats.
The 85+ year old demographic account for 32% of all C-19 deaths yet they are only 2% of the population.
The 65+ year old demographic account for 80% of all C-19 deaths yet they are only 16.5% of the population.
30% of C-19 deaths happened in nursing homes, hospice care or residence.
In other words, those under 65, over 80% of the population, are not catching C-19 and not dying from it if they do.
In fact, half of those tested as positive, 10% of the population and 80% <65, never see a doctor, clinic, hospital or morgue, i.e. don’t become a metadata statistic.
Seems to me that would be newsworthy.
Guess not.
Anyone following the lying, fact free, fake news MSM left wing propaganda coup d’etat machine are not just uninformed but actively misinformed, i.e. ignorant.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesinlast7days
LikeLiked by 2 people