At a briefing last night, Trump insisted that the government can fight the viral spread while also going to work. The change in tone comes as a growing faction has started to worry that weeks of economic shutdown will wreak financial havoc.
Rattled health officials are trying to fight off ascendant voices around Donald Trump pressing the president to restart the economy as soon as Monday to stem severe business and job losses.
“It is way too early to even consider rolling back any guidelines," said Howard Koh, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and former top Obama administration public health official. “With cases and deaths rising by the day, the country must double down, not lighten up, on social distancing and related measures.”
“Our country wasn’t built to be shut down,” Trump said during a Monday night briefing. “America will again and soon be open for business. … a lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting, a lot sooner.” “To use the analogy of a war, we send kids off to fight a war, and there are deaths associated with it. There will be deaths associated with this,” said Stephen Moore, an informal economic adviser to the Trump administration, who regularly speaks with Trump economic officials. “We are looking at no great options.”
Not all of Trump’s closest allies agree. Some have advocated for Trump to be as severe as necessary to slow the coronavirus spread.
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