These regional alliances are a good idea given the circumstances. There's no need for each state to reinvent the wheel vis-a-vis contact tracing.
But wouldn't it make far more sense for the federal government to come up with a plan and guidelines instead of each state or region having to do it for themselves? My guess is that between CDC, NIH, FDA, etc, the feds probably have a lot more expertise in disease management than any state or group thereof. Do we really need 6 regional plans or contact tracing apps or testing systems? How about just one? Or, at worst, a single template that each state or region can run with. Duplicating these efforts is so inefficient.
On top of that, there's a much bigger problem with leaving all of the contact tracing etc. to the states: they are all about to go broke. States can't run deficits, and tax revenue is going to plummet. Where will the money for all this apparatus and the army of contact tracers going to come from? In Congress, Dems are trying to get more money for states into the next covid response bill but McConnell and Trump are saying that's a non-starter. Having states responsible for the next stage is not going to work unless they start getting big cash infusions.
But wouldn't it make far more sense for the federal government to come up with a plan and guidelines instead of each state or region having to do it for themselves? My guess is that between CDC, NIH, FDA, etc, the feds probably have a lot more expertise in disease management than any state or group thereof. Do we really need 6 regional plans or contact tracing apps or testing systems? How about just one? Or, at worst, a single template that each state or region can run with. Duplicating these efforts is so inefficient.
On top of that, there's a much bigger problem with leaving all of the contact tracing etc. to the states: they are all about to go broke. States can't run deficits, and tax revenue is going to plummet. Where will the money for all this apparatus and the army of contact tracers going to come from? In Congress, Dems are trying to get more money for states into the next covid response bill but McConnell and Trump are saying that's a non-starter. Having states responsible for the next stage is not going to work unless they start getting big cash infusions.