I think calling it a third solution is totally fair. Whether it's a novel solution is separate.
The two solutions that are being debated now are (1) staying in lockdown until a vaccine or treatment is available, and (2) reopening and attempting to manage the spread using existing protocols/ideas (relatively low amounts of testing, quarantining after a period of infectiousness, some form of contact tracing, lots of finger crossing). At least, that's generally what I hear being debated: reopen or not, or when to reopen.
The post suggests that if we had quantitatively much more testing, we could pick a qualitatively different third solution -- namely, reopen pretty freely and realistically control the spread.
Sure, you can view that as a variant of the "reopen" option, but in my mind reopening feels very different with a realistic way to isolate people before they've had a chance to spread it very far. It's proactive vs reactive. If we fully reopen with even 2 orders of magnitude more testing than we're currently doing, it's just going to be a matter of closing back up wherever it gets out of hand. In practice, the openness will fluctuate, things will be spread out over time, politicians will continue to do the exact wrong things, and lots of people will continue to die.
In short: (1) stay in lockdown until vaccine/treatment, (2) reopen without a strategy, (3) reopen with a strategy.
Imo, those are the currently discussed solutions because of the lack of available testing. Ie, with the current constraints. It's akin to two people discussing how to use the budget of $1 million and a third saying "I have a third solution: Make the budget $100 million and do everything". Sure, it's not wrong, and it's different to the first two, but... who cares? Everyone kind of already knows if you have the $100 million you have a much better option.
The two solutions that are being debated now are (1) staying in lockdown until a vaccine or treatment is available, and (2) reopening and attempting to manage the spread using existing protocols/ideas (relatively low amounts of testing, quarantining after a period of infectiousness, some form of contact tracing, lots of finger crossing). At least, that's generally what I hear being debated: reopen or not, or when to reopen.
The post suggests that if we had quantitatively much more testing, we could pick a qualitatively different third solution -- namely, reopen pretty freely and realistically control the spread.
Sure, you can view that as a variant of the "reopen" option, but in my mind reopening feels very different with a realistic way to isolate people before they've had a chance to spread it very far. It's proactive vs reactive. If we fully reopen with even 2 orders of magnitude more testing than we're currently doing, it's just going to be a matter of closing back up wherever it gets out of hand. In practice, the openness will fluctuate, things will be spread out over time, politicians will continue to do the exact wrong things, and lots of people will continue to die.
In short: (1) stay in lockdown until vaccine/treatment, (2) reopen without a strategy, (3) reopen with a strategy.