Industrial policy against pandemics

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic illustrated the inability of the market to meet the needed production scale and speed of essential medical products. The state should adopt a risk-based approach, allowing for experimentation with various technological solutions such as vaccines and tests, while ramping up their production. The intervention should resolve uncertainty, combine resources, coordinate technological choices, lift barriers to entry, ensure knowledge sharing, and support the value chain. The cost of this strategy is dwarfed by the economic fallout of a pandemic. Universal testing, an overlooked solution, is a key component of an infrastructure against future pandemics.