Thanks for the link. Very well written article. Interesting.
One problem. The author wrote, “The country decided to create their own test kit, which turned out not to work.”
False. The test kits work.
The lame CDC rejected the test kits, because the CDC did not approve of the test kits. CDC and DMV and other government agencies are filled with dim wits who prefer personal power over scientific tools. Sad. The test kits could have been widely distributed last week in America but the CDC stopped them.
The final analysis is really quite simple: the downside effects of a premature shut-down are deferred, unrealized losses. It's not like the economy will be thrown into some kind of semi-permanent depression. Rather, it just lets the nation go take a hike for a month or two before everyone is fully charged to get working again.
OTOH, the downside effects of a delayed shut-down (assuming one would act anyway with days of viewing the growth log chart) are very real, very substantial hits to the underlying US & global economies; ones that may not be so easy to recover. And, of course there are the human costs, as well as resonating medical effects across the spectrum of regular needs and demands.
So, like Ike writing two letters on the eve of D-Day, you make your decision and go with it. Trump made his last night, and the nation is now on full tilt shut-down as secondary executive decisions cascade through state governments and private, commercial companies.
As of now, the debate over good, bad, true or false are all moot. The only issue now is management in the new normal as we implement the author's final recommendations, which are hard stop isolation decrees. (See Italy for progression from denial to action.)
Test Kits wouldn’t have made a difference, we’d still be in the exact same place today.