Trump understands what his critics don’t: The current lockdown is unsustainable
We need to get the country back to work. I can’t wait to get back. It will obviously happen in stages. By Easter it would be stupid to lock the whole country down at the same level as now. Clearly New York City won’t be ready by Easter. No need to hold areas back that will by then will have few or no cases. I’m glad they are doing the return to work area by area county by county. That way rural areas of New York State, Illinois, California won’t be bound down by state wide orders caused by their largest cities.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
President Trump enjoys 60 percent approval for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but that has not stopped his critics from trying to stoke public outrage at his expense.
After the president expressed hope that the anti-malaria drug chloroquine was showing signs of success as a treatment for the coronavirus, news organizations tried to blame him for the death of an Arizona man who self-medicated with fish tank solvent that contained a different form of the substance. “Man dies after taking drug touted as coronavirus treatment by Trump,” CBS News declared . No, he didn’t. Trump never suggested anyone self-medicate with aquarium cleaner.
Now the latest source of outrage is the president’s announcement that wants to begin lifting the current economic lockdown by Easter. In a press briefing Tuesday, Trump said his “goal is to ease the guidelines and open things up to very large sections of our country” and that “I hope we can do this by Easter,” but added that “our decision will be based on hard facts and data.”
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Every life matters. That is why at the start of a pandemic, the right strategy is to accept high economic risk in order to mitigate the risks to public health of a new and unknown pathogen. Trump effectively ordered a recession — asking businesses to close and workers to stay home — to slow the spread of the virus so that public health officials could learn how it behaves, develop our testing capability and increase the production of protective gear, ventilators and hospital capacity for the hardest-hit areas, as well as the development of therapeutics to treat it.
But over time, as we get a handle on the outbreak, we need to start adjusting our decision-making to balance risk with the massive toll the lockdown is taking on the American people. While journalists can telework, millions of Americans who can’t are losing their careers and the businesses they spent a lifetime building. A prolonged economic shutdown will lead to deaths as well, in the form of increased rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide.
The president understands that we need a sustainable strategy to defeat the virus and that the current lockdown is unsustainable. A record 3.28 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, and economists warn that gross domestic product could decline by about 30 percent in the second quarter as a result of the lockdown. That can’t continue indefinitely.
The emergency relief bill buys us some more time, but at enormous cost. We are borrowing $2 trillion from our children and grandchildren so the government can effectively replace the lost revenue and paychecks of millions of businesses and workers in the United States. We can’t do that forever. And replacing lost income does not replace the dignity of work.
No one in the White House is suggesting that we sacrifice the elderly or the vulnerable. Asked by a reporter “how many deaths are you willing to accept?” to restore growth, Trump answered “none.” Rather, the goal is to get this country to the same place as South Korea, which has effectively contained the virus without quarantining tens of millions of people. South Koreans did so by following a strategy of “Trace, Test and Treat” — using mass testing to isolate the infected while allowing healthy people to go about their lives. South Korea has been able to do this because it was able to test early. We have not because we lost six crucial weeks in ramping up testing thanks to the incompetence of the Food and Drug Administration, which refused to allow private and academic advanced labs to develop coronavirus tests. Only in March were FDA restrictions lifted and outside labs given the green light to begin testing.
It will take time to catch up, but once we reach that point where we can test anyone, we can start figuring out where we can ease up on the lockdowns. As Anthony S. Fauci said on Tuesday, “areas of the country that are not hot spots … still have a window of significant degree of being able to contain” the virus. It may be that in these parts of the country where there aren’t many cases, we can begin to follow the South Korean approach soon, while the hardest-hit places such as New York may need to maintain a lockdown for many months.
Will that happen by Easter? Maybe, maybe not. As Fauci says, we need to be flexible and follow the evidence. But it has to happen eventually.
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After the president expressed hope that the anti-malaria drug chloroquine was showing signs of success as a treatment for the coronavirus, news organizations tried to blame him for the death of an Arizona man who self-medicated with fish tank solvent that contained a different form of the substance. “Man dies after taking drug touted as coronavirus treatment by Trump,” CBS News declared . No, he didn’t. Trump never suggested anyone self-medicate with aquarium cleaner.
Now the latest source of outrage is the president’s announcement that wants to begin lifting the current economic lockdown by Easter. In a press briefingTuesday, Trump said his “goal is to ease the guidelines and open things up to very large sections of our country” and that “I hope we can do this by Easter,” but added that “our decision will be based on hard facts and data.”
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Every life matters. That is why at the start of a pandemic, the right strategy is to accept high economic risk in order to mitigate the risks to public health of a new and unknown pathogen. Trump effectively ordered a recession — asking businesses to close and workers to stay home — to slow the spread of the virus so that public health officials could learn how it behaves, develop our testing capability and increase the production of protective gear, ventilators and hospital capacity for the hardest-hit areas, as well as the development of therapeutics to treat it.
But over time, as we get a handle on the outbreak, we need to start adjusting our decision-making to balance risk with the massive toll the lockdown is taking on the American people. While journalists can telework, millions of Americans who can’t are losing their careers and the businesses they spent a lifetime building. A prolonged economic shutdown will lead to deaths as well, in the form of increased rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide.
The president understands that we need a sustainable strategy to defeat the virus and that the current lockdown is unsustainable.
Crooked donnie has NO clue what he is doing, much less saying. I guess he knows more than economists...he knows NOTHING
You can be my guest and go out in public all you want
White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx warned the public not to panic when they hear about models and projections of the pandemic's spread.
"Models are models," she said. "When people start talking about 20% of a population getting infected, it's very scary, but we don't have data that matches that based on our experience."
She said the media should not "make the implication that when they need a hospital bed it's not going to be there, or a ventilator, it's not going to be there, we don't have evidence of that."
"It's our job collectively to assure the American people," she also said. "There is no model right now -- no reality on the ground where we can see that 60% to 70% of Americans are going to get infected in the next eight to 12 weeks. I want to be clear about that."
There is a major flaw with this right wing article - no one is suggesting that a "lockdown" could or should go on forever.
The seeded article sets up a false choice, either end the lockdown real soon or people will lose the dignity that comes with work. This is obvious nonsense, but that doesnt stop these people.
The lockdown should end when it is safe to do so without restarting the pandemic here. Thats should be the beginning and the end of it.
The "national debt" should play zero role. Most Americans , in and out of Washington dont give a damn about the national debt, and now we are supposed to at a time when tens of thousands of lives are on the line? Please.
The PURPOSE of the bailout and stimulus and personal payouts just passed by Congress is to tide the economy over until the crisis is over. Now, before these actions even go into effect people want to end the lockdown.
Wait for the experts to say it's time. period.
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Prostelytizing.
[Deleted]
She has clearly told you that I don’t work for Heartland Institute. I worked for one employer for 33 1/3 years until January 17 and started with my 2nd employer on Jan 29.
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some would prefer Americans to remain in a state of hopelessness. Fortunately Fox News and Fox Nation are not among them.
Keep up the hope America. Keep our Christian faith and pray for us and our country through these tough times. God bless one and all.
Gotta love how you make it about your religion. Screw the non Christian Americans .... your comments disgust me.
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Just in from your very own Rep Kevin Brady:
AS OF THIS MORNING U.S.:
135,499 cases / 2,381 deaths
NY: 59,513 / 958
NJ: 13,386 / 157
CA: 4,643 / 118
WA: 4,310 / 186
Texas: 2,552 / 34
Thanks for your fine comments. You were well stated in them. 👏
Where did I suggest that those who were of Jewish,Muslim or another actual religion should not keep up their faith and do the rest of what I said. Your faux outrage falls upon deaf ears. Did I not say God bless one and ALL?
Us too. There would be no ultimate hope in this world without our faith.
Fox News?
Apparently you haven't been keeping up:
Jan 16, 2021
Fox News Viewership Plummets
Right wing article from MSN and the Washington post?
Nah. Probably just more TDS. Or some more HDS. You can safely ignore it.
You realize that the Bezos Amazon Post along with MSN was the source of this seeded article?
A worker, wearing personal protective equipment, builds a splash guard during a mass manufacturing operation to supply New York City government with protection to distribute against COVID-19, Friday, March 27, 2020, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
During the press briefing, he also said hospitals need to stop hoarding medical equipment during the pandemic. The president urged hospitals who are not using devices, such as ventilators and face masks, to release them to areas most impacted by the virus.
President Trump recently invoked emergency powers to mandate General Motors begin manufacturing ventilators for coronavirus patients. Although new medical equipment is in the works, the president emphasized hospitals need to share the equipment they already have if it is not being used.
“We do have a problem of hoarding. We have some health care workers, some hospitals…hoarding equipment, including ventilators. We have to release those ventilators, especially hospitals that are never going to use them. They don’t want to lose their ventilators in case they need them, but these are areas in some cases that probably will not need them.”
– Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States
A nurse demonstrates outside the emergency entrance at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx borough of New York, Saturday, March 28, 2020, demanding more personal protective equipment for medical staff treating coronavirus patients. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
A plane carrying much needed medical supplies from China touched down in New York Sunday as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to combat the pandemic. The commercial carrier landed at John F. Kennedy Airport with a cargo of 12 million gloves, 130,000 N95 masks and 1.7 million surgical masks.
“At President Trump’s direction, we formed an unprecedented public-private partnership to ensure that massive amounts of masks, gear and other PPE will be brought to the United States immediately to better equip our health care workers on the front lines and to better serve the American people,” read a statement from White House senior staff.
Most of the supplies will be allocated by FEMA to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, while nursing homes and high-risk areas in other parts of the country will be given the rest.
This is the first of several supply flights the White House has planned over the next month. About 20 airlifts are set to take place through early April alone.
As of Sunday, the COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. reached at least 2,400, with more than 140,000 confirmed cases.
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