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Law360 (March 23, 2020, 11:07 PM EDT ) President Donald Trump late Monday signaled that he may soon recommend a widespread resumption of normal business activities despite a dramatic rise in novel coronavirus infections and deaths, asserting that economic disruption may actually be more harmful than the pathogen.
At a Monday evening news briefing, Trump voiced growing impatience with social distancing measures, which could help to contain the pandemic but also have swiftly led to large-scale layoffs and shuttered storefronts.
"We can't turn that off and think it's going to be wonderful," the president said of the economy. "There will be tremendous repercussions. There will be tremendous death from that — death. … Probably more death from that than anything that we're talking about with respect to the virus."
The White House on March 16 announced an initiative, dubbed "15 Days to Slow the Spread," that advised older Americans to stay home and also warned younger Americans that they could spread the disease.
In the ensuing week, the number of confirmed infections in the U.S. has soared to roughly 45,000 from about 6,000, and the total number of deaths has climbed to around 600 from roughly 100, according to data late Monday from Johns Hopkins University.
The president on Monday noted that some experts have predicted that strict social distancing may need to continue for several months. But he suggested that he could recommend a loosening of restrictions much sooner.
"At some point, we'll be setting some guidelines," Trump said. "We'll be setting some datelines, and we'll be announcing them in the not-too-distant future."
The president has staked his reelection campaign in no small part on the unemployment rate, which officially stands at 3.5% but could now be much higher, and the stock market, which has plummeted this month to levels not previously seen during Trump's presidency.
It's possible that new recommendations from Trump could conflict with the directives of governors — including the chief executives of New York, California and Illinois — who have banned large gatherings and told residents to avoid going outside for non-essential reasons.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state has about half of all U.S. coronavirus cases, was asked during an interview late Monday on CNN to respond to Trump's remarks. "Everybody agrees that this is an unsustainable situation," Cuomo said, adding that "it's a false choice to say [protect] public health or restart the economy."
The president appeared to make a similar argument during Monday's briefing, hinting that it may be possible to protect Americans from the novel coronavirus and at the same time get large parts of the economy up and running again.
"We can do two things simultaneously," the president said. Trump also observed that some states have relatively few cases so far, suggesting that his upcoming recommendations might vary geographically.
"Parts of our country are very lightly affected, very small numbers," Trump said.
But Cuomo, who is spearheading a massive increase in hospital capacity in New York City, said Monday that dark days are looming for NYC. There is, he said, a "wave of increasing cases" that "is going to overwhelm the health care system" in coming weeks.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been viewed as relatively candid about the coronavirus crisis, has appeared with the president at recent briefings about the outbreak, but he didn't attend Monday's briefing.
--Editing by Emily Kokoll.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
