President Trump signaled his hopes of reopening the economy when a 15-day social distancing advisory concludes next week, even as the daily death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 100 for the first time in the United States.
The question of what comes next is dividing the administration between those who believe a strict suppression strategy must remain in place and those pushing to ease restrictions that have closed businesses across the country and raised the specter of 30% unemployment.
Trump has made his position clear, first in a tweet on Sunday night, writing, “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself,” and again during a briefing by his coronavirus task force on Monday evening.
“America will again and soon be open for business,” he said, despite admitting the death toll could reach 50,000. “We are not going to let it turn into a long-lasting financial problem.”
His optimism is at odds with his own surgeon general, who hours earlier had warned the public, “This week, it’s going to get bad,” and with a death toll that rose to exceed 500, according to Johns Hopkins University.
And it stands in contrast to his own comments a week ago when he issued 15-day guidelines designed to stop the spread of the disease. At the time, he said the outbreak could last until August.
But since then, aides said he has been worried at the loss of potentially millions of jobs and continuing market turbulence.
“I’m not looking at months. I can tell you right now, we’re going to be opening up our country,” he said on Monday, suggesting relief could come in weeks.
The president repeatedly said he did not want the cure to be worse than the problem as he spelled out the dilemma facing his officials.
“You have tremendous responsibility,” he said. “We have jobs. We have … people get tremendous anxiety and depression, and you have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies. You have death probably in far greater numbers than the numbers we are talking about with regard to the virus.”
Instead, Trump said it was possible to do two things at once, both opening up the economy while still protecting people. But he may face the opposition of Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, who has become something of a media star for gently pushing back against some of the president’s most optimistic claims.
Fauci did not appear in the White House briefing room on Monday. When asked whether the doctor agreed with the need to reopen the economy, Trump replied, “No, he doesn’t not agree.”
Deborah Birx, the task force coordinator, said her team had been tasked with using its data to calculate projections of where the virus was spreading and the impact of mitigation strategies.
“You have to focus the resources and the intervention and the structural prevention interventions in the areas where the virus is circulating,” she said. “Otherwise, people never understand why you’re doing this … So it has to be very tailored geographically, and it may have to also be very tailored by age group, really understanding who’s at the greatest risk and understanding how to protect them.”
Yet, the White House stance appeared to be changing just as other nations stepped up restrictions and the head of the World Health Organization warned that the pandemic was accelerating. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it took 67 days to reach 100,000 cases around the world but a mere four days for the total to go from 200,000 to 300,000.
“We are not helpless bystanders,” he said. “We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
The United Kingdom intensified its suppression measures hours later, imposing the toughest ever peacetime restrictions on the British public. It ordered people not to leave their homes for all but essential activities, such as shopping for necessities, exercise, and medical purposes, and ordered the closure of all stores except those selling vital goods.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that police will disperse groups of more than two people gathering in public.
“I must give the British people a very simple instruction,” he said. “You must stay at home.”
Nations around the world have launched economic rescue packages as they deal with the impact of a global pandemic.
The issue is particularly immediate for a president who had been planning his November reelection campaign on a booming economy and record market highs.
Larry Kudlow, Trump’s most senior economic adviser, signaled the plan earlier in the day in an interview with Fox News.
“We can’t shut in the economy. The economic cost to individuals is just too great,” he said. “The president is right. The cure can’t be worse than the disease, and we’re going to have to make some difficult trade-offs.”
