n the last five weeks, more than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits. The only sensible solution is dramatically to expand testing capacity, to trace potentially infected people and to isolate them.

The stats are a clear sign that the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus is the worst since the Great Depression. UMN economics professor V. V. Chari is quoted.

In a Fox9 article, Professor Chris Phelan is interviewed about how the US should respond to the economical impact of COVID-19. “The economist in me simply wants to emphasize that the costs we’re paying for this kind of shutdown per week are enormous,” said Phelan. “So we better see the benefits being enormous as well.”

"Right now, we are all flying blind. We do not know if 700 or 7,000 or 700,000 Minnesotans have been infected. Testing a random fraction of the population would go far in allowing us to make evidence-based state policy, even if the tests are imperfect." Economics professors, V.V. Chari and Christopher Phelan's op-ed for the Star Tribune about structuring an economically sustainable quarantine.