Trump said that his administration’s “social distancing” recommendations may remain in place for months depending on the behavior of the coronavirus.
Trump spoke to reporters at his daily coronavirus press briefing on Friday and fielded a question on how long people can expect to live cloistered in their homes and cut off from social activities. Trump could not give a precise answer.
Asked if the social distancing guidelines could remain in place for months, Trump said, “I hope not. I hope it’s going to be sooner. I hope [the virus] disappears faster than that.”
The president praised the efforts of the millions of people who have remained in isolation to avoid spreading the coronavirus.
“When you talk about distancing, social distancing, I mean, you know, we don’t have a law. We are not going to put them in jail,” Trump said. “But they have committed to social distancing because, No. 1, they are afraid, and No. 2, they really are wanting to win this thing.”
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, gave a similar answer on Wednesday when asked how long the pathogen may continue to affect day-to-day life in the United States.
“You don’t make the timeline. The virus makes the timeline,” Fauci said.
The uncertainty of how long progress against the coronavirus may take has all but stopped the U.S. economy. The heavy regulations put in place by states to stop the spread of the virus have resulted in economic damage as if a “a natural disaster [hit] the whole economy at once,” according to Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
U.S. workers applied for unemployment insurance in record numbers last week. The Labor Department reported on Thursday that 3.3 million workers sent in new claims, the largest number of claims in U.S. history, after businesses laid off massive numbers of employees to cut costs to outlast the virus.
