The US President has told White House reporters he is aiming to reopen “large sections of the country” by Easter – just over two weeks away – clashing with members of his own coronavirus taskforce.
“I hope we can do this by Easter,” Trump said. “I think that would be a great thing for our country.”
The President said he picked Easter because “I just thought it was a beautiful time, a beautiful timeline, it’s a great day.”
But at the same briefing, taskforce members Anthony Fauci urged caution.
“You can look at a date but you’ve got to be very flexible on a literally day-by-day and week-by-week basis,” he said.
Public health experts were blunter.
“Everybody living through this wants to not be in this situation,” Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Vox. “But the call to end it soon – and saying that’s his intention – is not based on public health. There’s nothing to suggest that ending it soon will have any good impact at all.”
They are warning more people will become infected – and die – if the measures are eased soon.
But Trump seems more concerned about the damage to the economy.
“Above all, we know that the best thing for our economy is a very powerful victory over the virus,” he said.
Considering the US is well behind on testing people – even when they have symptoms – and US hospitals are already running short of protective equipment, we’d say it should be the least of Trump’s worries.
