Trump Says Parts of U.S. Could Go Back to Work in a Few Weeks

Trump Says Parts of U.S. Could Go Back to Work in a Few Weeks
Rebecca Ballhaus, Stephanie Armour  Thursday,3/26/2020
Article Link
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-says-parts-of-us-could-go-back-to-work-in-a-few-weeks/ar-BB11HLp1?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=spartanntp

Quoted Excerpts:
But the federal government’s ability to force the reopening of the economy is limited, as much of that power rests with state governors and mayors.

Mr. Trump’s timeline also is considerably shorter than what many health experts, including some in his own administration, have said will be necessary to blunt the spread of coronavirus across the U.S. and keep the nation’s health care system from being overwhelmed.

The president claimed in a tweet Wednesday that the news media was pressuring him to keep much of the economy closed to hurt his re-election chances in November. 

While the Trump administration has issued guidelines urging Americans to stay home, the most severe restrictions nationwide have come from governors, who have ordered nonessential businesses to close in at least 24 states and have imposed restrictions on those businesses in a dozen more. Nineteen states plan to or already require residents to stay home. Federal guidelines don’t trump state restrictions.

Governors in both parties rejected the Easter timeline the president offered and said they planned to chart their own course. Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state has been by far the hardest hit by the virus, stressed that the federal government was offering suggestions, not decrees. “They call them guidelines because they are guidelines,” he said at a briefing Wednesday. “We’ll come up with a plan that works for New York.”
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last week ordered the state’s 40 million residents to stay at home except for essential activities, said it would be “misleading to represent” that California would reopen by Easter.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, tweeted that he was looking forward to the day when the economy could reopen, but “it’s not yet here.”
Public health experts say it could take months, if not years, before life returns to normal. They say the U.S. is woefully behind on the type of widespread testing and quarantine measures adopted in Singapore and South Korea that were successful at reducing spread of the virus. They also say that reopening too soon could overwhelm hospitals, endanger health-care workers and fuel the virus’s spread in states where it isn’t prevalent now.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned in a briefing Wednesday that in the absence of necessary preparations, the virus could resurge once restrictions are eased. “The last thing any country needs is to open schools and businesses, only to be forced to close them again because of a resurgence,” he said.
Ned Price, who was an adviser to former President Barack Obama, said that while Mr. Trump has authority over CDC guidelines, the agency has traditionally been granted a level of independence by previous presidents. That practice, however, is dictated “not by laws but by norms,” which Mr. Trump has made a habit of shattering, he said.