With less than six months left for another election fight, US President Donald Trump is not taking any chances, least of all the Wuhan virus jeopardizing his plans; and so wants people to get back to their regular lives even though it could mean higher casualties, said a CNN report.Mr Trump shrugged off recommendations by health experts against lifting curbs, although many states continue to report a high volume of COVID-19 deaths. Notwithstanding the precarious position, he’s urging businesses to resume operations and redoubling efforts to get the US economy back up and running, Stephen Collinson wrote in the report.
Mr Trump’s overly optimistic view that the contagion would pass “with or without a vaccine” belies any rational explanation. He conceded there could be more deaths if opened, and yet he wants to demonstrate that is the only way forward, Mr Collinson wrote. “I think we’re doing very well on vaccines but, with or without a vaccine, it’s going to pass, and we’re going to be back to normal,” Mr Trump declared.
Deflecting Attention
Mr Collinson stated that there is already a talk in the administration to disband the coronavirus taskforce, whose projections often contradicted Trump’s. While advisers like Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx would remain on board but their catastrophic forecast would be far less visible from public glare with the team dismantled. It had drawn too much attention around the pandemic for Trump’s comfort as he focuses on his reelection bid, which is only possible when restrictions are gone.
Mr Trump’s actions are bound to raise questions about his priorities in the face of the pandemic still he is willing to reconcile to the fact that there could be more deaths. He hopes such a move would shift people’s attention to other issues and thwart oversight that could reveal his administration’s failings in crisis management, Mr Collinson noted.
“We’re now looking at a little bit of a different form, and that form is safety and opening, and we’ll have a different group probably set up for that,” Mr Trump said. Asked if the deaths could increase from the opening, Mr Trump replied: “It’s possible there will be some because you won’t be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is.” He said that while it is important to maintain social-distancing, the stay-at-home orders are also injurious to national well-being. So, he is likely to amplify that “it’s time to talk about comebacks” in the coming weeks.
Need Our Country Back
“We have to get our country back. You know, people are dying the other way too. When you look at what’s happened with drugs, it goes up. When you look at suicides, I mean, take a look at what’s going on. People are losing their jobs — we have to bring it back, and that’s what we’re doing,” President Trump told reporters last week.
However, fear over a premature opening in the absence of a treatment against the virus, which could plunge the country into deeper health and economic crisis, is palpable in many quarters. Connecticut Governor and Democratic leader Ned Lamont expressed outrage at the talks of downgrading efforts to combat the virus, especially at a time when his state, one of the hardest-hit, sees no respite from the pandemic.
“It seems a little weird that just a couple of days ago the President was at the Lincoln Memorial, doubling the estimates for the number of people who were going to die, given the COVID crisis, then a day later says we may wind down the Pence task force,” Lamont told CNN. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. I think we need more federal direction.”
Job Loss Bigger Threat
The Trump administration, however, doesn’t want to sit out while the economy goes into a tailspin. Officials hope to find a way out of this morass, and as a start, want a phased reopening of the states. According to an estimate, some 30 million Americans have already lost their jobs who could be more in danger from income loss than the virus. Mr Collinson wrote citing White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett that the US unemployment figure could be equivalent to the Great Depression number of 19% to 20%. “So we are looking at probably the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression,” he said.
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