Jack Rubinstein

Opinion contributor

In the month since Gov. Mike DeWine and Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Acton made the proactive decision to impose one of the first and strictest quarantines in the country, a few things have become clear. First, their leadership and science-based decision-making saved thousands of lives. They did this by preparing the health care systems and convincing us to follow the quarantine so closely that what could have become a tsunami of incredibly ill people has turned into a trickle.

Second, and painfully, we have come to a point where we need to start getting people infected with novel coronavirus. That's not an easy thing to say, but we find ourselves in a situation where we only have bad and worse options. The measures in place up to now have only postponed the inevitable. There is no shortcut through this epidemic. Sooner or later most of us will be infected.

The present quarantine is unsustainable and at some point people will need to resume their lives. This will come either from mass disobedience as the accumulated stress rears its ugly head through domestic violence, malnutrition and bankruptcies, or it can come in planned, orderly waves of disease where a properly prepared health care system will provide everyone with a hospital bed, medical staff and, when needed, ventilators.

So we need to start exposing people to the virus, and what better place to start than with the group that is least vulnerable – children – and in the state that is best prepared.

Exposing children first is based on possibly the only consistent bit of data from around the world. In almost every case, except those with serious preexisting conditions, children present minimal, if any, symptoms and are incredibly unlikely to require hospitalization. Furthermore, the latest data shows that people between the ages of 20 and 39, the age range of most caregivers, have a very low rate of complications.

If it turns out that a handful of exposed children, or their relatively young caregivers, require advanced care, our healthcare system is currently capable of providing the best medical care possible for them, while also safeguarding medical staff with appropriate personal protective equipment.

It's clear why Ohio should take the lead with this approach. Our state government has put in place an impressive system of real-time assessment of hospital capabilities and has taken advantage of our world-class academic institutions to provide accurate and actionable data to hospital leadership and its citizenry.

Reasonable people will argue for waiting on mass testing, a vaccine or even a cure to be available in the near future. Unfortunately, if we've learned anything over the past few months, it's that the United States government is woefully unprepared to undertake the mass testing required, and Americans are probably unwilling to give up basic civil liberties to allow tracking of individuals' positions that would be needed.

Developing a vaccine will take at least 12 months, and it has also become clear to the medical community that even if a treatment is developed or repurposed from an existing drug, the testing required to confirm its efficacy is also about a year away.

There is also a strong case to be made that children are being kept at home during this pandemic for the sake of their caregivers. A harsh socioeconomic reality is that many children are being raised by older caregivers who fall into high-risk categories if infected. That is why the state government should work hand-in-hand with local communities, religious organizations and charities to plan and arrange childcare options for those in the most difficult and vulnerable of circumstances.

This plan will likely increase the number of people with some degree of immunity and will take advantage of our well-prepared health care system to treat the relatively rare cases where they require hospitalization. If this is done carefully and by relying closely on the medical infrastructure data, other sectors of the population could potentially be opened in stages in order to create small, manageable waves of disease and show the rest of the country once again how Ohio deals with crises.

Jack Rubinstein lives in Symmes Township and is a physician-scientist at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of the medical novel, "The Perfect Dose."