The Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago asked a panel of economists if they agreed with the following: “Required elements for an economic ‘restart’ after lockdowns include a massive increase in testing capacity (for infections and antibodies) along with a coherent strategy for preventing new outbreaks and reintroducing low-risk/no-risk individuals into public activities.” Ninety-three percent said yes, with 70 percent saying they strongly agreed.

Economists explained that the economy cannot be magically restarted until people are confident they can return to communal life either because: 1) they have the antibody and can be assured they will not contract the disease again; or 2) only people with negative tests will be out and about. (The latter raises all sorts of questions because someone negative today can be positive tomorrow, and we must trust that everyone else out and about has tested negative.) As economist Austan Goolsbee wisecracked, “Do you want people to get out of their pajamas and back to work? Then we NEED TO DO MORE TESTS.”

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In surveying an array of economists, the New York Times also found wide agreement that an economic restart depends on “a critical task in defeating the disease itself: developing, and broadly disseminating, a treatment and ultimately a vaccine. Governments and philanthropies need a way to coordinate in allocating funds to the myriad efforts by public and private labs around the world.” Academic studies released on Monday put testing front and center in the decision to lift stay-at-home orders.

The growing consensus on the centrality of testing raises several concerns. First, the administration originally bollixed the development and distribution of tests, consigning us to thousands of deaths that might have been avoided — and to a strategy of extreme social isolation. There is good reason to doubt its competence (and candor) to get massive testing up and running anytime soon. Second, President Trump is obsessed with restarting the economy arbitrarily (Easter! Football in the fall!), and is unlikely to wait patiently until experts find sufficient testing has been completed before goading businesses, states and individuals to get back to work. This may take many more months. Third, we see in reports from Hong Kong and China that the danger in returning to business as normal too soon will be yet another surge in the virus. (International travel is identified as the culprit in a surge of cases in Asia.)

In short, “Addressing the economic policy challenge is, in the end, inextricably linked to dealing with the shock to the world’s public health.” That requires competence, speed, good judgment and trust in leaders — all qualities in short supply during the Trump administration. The president remains the chief dispenser of misinformation; his underlings can be prevented from publicly crossing him (as when Trump would not allow the National Institutes of Health’s Anthony S. Fauci to respond to a question about hydroxychloroquine). Trump can stamp his foot all he likes, but Americans are unlikely to risk their lives absent a high degree of certainty they are not going to contract the disease before there is a vaccine.