Ross: Researcher has idea for how Biden should deal with COVID crisis
Nov 9, 2020, 5:06 AM | Updated: Nov 10, 2020, 10:14 am

President-elect Joe Biden. (Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
Job one for the president-elect will be to crack down on the virus. If you’re wondering what kind of magic might actually do something, this researcher has a plan, and it’s not about the vaccine.
“We don’t need a vaccine to do it and a vaccine won’t actually do it,” said Dr. William Haseltine.
Haseltine is a Harvard professor, businessman, author, and contributor to Forbes magazine who surprised me when I asked him what he’d do. He said the answer is to do what China did.
“And I can tell you from direct conversations with my staff there. They are free as we wish we were. They’re as free as they were before COVID,” Haseltine said.
But China is a police state and we’re not. No problem, says Dr. Haseltine — we would do the American version of what China did. First, mobilize the defense department to produce a billion tests for every man, woman, and child, and then, instead of forcing infected people to isolate, pay them.
“You pay them to stay home,” Haseltine said. “You pay them $500 a day to stay home as a family. And if somebody is staying at home for that reason, they have to get their job back.”
If Biden does that and Americans keep masking up, COVID is gone by May and America is free again.
“Going to theaters, having parties, hooking up, with no worries,” Haseltine said.
Vaccine or not. Yes, he did indeed say “hooking up.”
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