The national quarantine would give hospitals time to stock up on supplies and equipment, find more beds and room to treat people, get better organized and give clinical staff a respite to recuperate for the next onslaught of Covid-19 care. Without these measures, any Covid-19 resurgence would be far harsher, and economically damaging.

Begin a mass education program. While many Americans have been more careful about washing their hands, keeping six feet away from other people, and staying indoors as much as possible, these new behaviors have not been adopted in every part of the country. We need a stronger campaign to educate Americans about these habits so that the average number of people any infected person might spread the virus to would drop below one, from about 2.4 today.

Create a Covid-19 certification system. States should use blood tests to certify people who have had Covid-19, are immune and are no longer contagious. These people could then work in hospitals or other areas where being risk-free would be a benefit.

Slowly open the economy and social activities. If these steps are taken, we should slowly open up parts of the economy in June, while requiring those 70 and older, or others at high risk, to continue to shelter in place, perhaps in isolation. Lifting restrictions could start with children and young adults, who are far less likely to get seriously ill and die. We might open up summer school, on a voluntary basis, and camps. Parents should be allowed to assess the risk that their children could become infected with the coronavirus and bring it home. Teachers and administrators would also have to be able to opt in, knowing they could acquire Covid-19. Colleges and universities might open up for summer sessions, with faculty and staff opting in, or not, with knowledge of the risks they are taking. Following South Korea and Taiwan, America should deploy testing and contact tracing aggressively during this opening to limit any potential outbreak.

Open the economy more fully. If the initial opening works, we should allow people in offices to go back to work in places where Covid-19 infections have died down. Businesses need to require workers to follow rules on physical distancing with fellow workers and customers, and to tell employees to isolate themselves if they believe they are infected. To permit physical distancing, we’d need occupancy of restaurants, bars and stores to be at half the legal limit.

We would then open museums and other venues to small numbers of people, although it would be necessary to still prohibit mass gatherings where physical distancing is not possible — sporting events, large conferences, Fourth of July celebrations and tourist sites like Disney World. When possible, stores and restaurants could be managed and staffed by people certified to have had Covid-19 and be unable to spread it. If there are no flare-ups, more venues could be opened. During this gradual opening, public health teams would continue to perform contact tracing and enforce isolation. Meanwhile, scientists will continue furious efforts to create a vaccine that prevents infection, or medicines that treat the disease.

This is not a perfect solution. It is a middle course that can save lives and save the economy. Indeed, a recent analysis of the 1918 influenza pandemic concluded that cities that put in place public health measures like physical distancing tended to have both low mortality and high economic growth. Undoubtedly, some people will still become infected and die, but far fewer than if we arbitrarily set Easter as a date to open the economy without any concern that hundreds of thousands of people could die as a result.