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Well, my snark was directed at the press report, which is a deeply unserious attempt to further the “Trump took to long to order tests” narrative.

Which we learned was false: the FDA was stuck in their bureaucratic rut, and for a few weeks there at the beginning, had only licensed the CDC to create and run the tests.

What Trump did next was classic Trump, and exactly what was needed: explained to the FDA that they needed to get with the program and allow lots of labs to develop and run tests, while he reached out to the private sector to make it happen, fast.

So, yeah, there was a slow start, thanks to the swamp. I don’t think that there’s been a chief executive who would work so hard with the private sector to cut through the red tape and unleash the creativity of these companies and labs on the problem.

But to your question. I’m just some dude on the internet, but I do think that the strategy that Dr. Birk started to outline makes a certain amount of sense. If we had a cheap, fast, widely available antibody test, and if as we suspect large numbers of people have had it and don’t realize it and are thus immune, those people could be told that they’re safe to go back to work and go about their lives.

That leaves two groups. First is the currently infected. If we had a quick, reliable test that would show infection even before symptoms start, we could do a lot better with quarantine of the sick. There’s a long history of this, and even a body of law in every state that recognizes this and specifies what the state can, and cannot do in this regard. We can dust off those laws and put them to use (frankly, they already have been in many places.)

Then finally those who are not sick, and who have no immunity. There is no precedent in our system of government that allows the state to demand that a healthy individual, who has committed no crime and poses a threat only to himself to be quarantined. We can’t allow this murderous CCP virus to be the agent that allows this.

People need to be left to make up their own minds. If you’re at risk, maybe you limit your contacts more strictly than if you’re younger and have no pre-existing conditions. But the answer can’t be a state where we have to “show our papers” to go about our private lives.

I think most of us posting on this forum somewhere along the line took an oath to “Defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America”. The wording might vary depending on the context of when that oath was made, but I’ve never heard of a single one that had an expiration date.

So it’s not really a question for the experts. I voted for Donald Trump, not Drs. Birk and Fauci. And I think that his instinct is to get America back to work, even if we have to accept some risk.