Where Do We Go From Here?

One month ago, on 26 February, President Trump made this remark about coronavirus patients in the United States:

”And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

In case you think that I am forwarding fake news, I took that quote from whitehouse,gov, their official website.

Today, one month later, there are nearly 85,000 known cases of coronavirus infection in the US. Clearly, Mr. Trump’s assessment of the problem was inaccurate.

More troubling, his failure to take the pandemic seriously has resulted in a dual catastrophe of the rapid spread of the disease and a hospital system that is tragically underprepared to handle the volume of patients requiring critical care. One hospital in Queens, New York had thirteen COVID-19 fatalities today. Thirteen fatalities in one day.

We cannot replay the tape. We can’t go back to January and start preparing for the outbreak as we should have. But we can avoid making decisions based on Mr. Trump’s fanciful foolishness. It is not advisable to relax social distancing restrictions. It is not feasible to send people back to their workplaces and send children back to schools. To do so would be to invite an even greater disaster than we are facing already.

Hospitals are already at capacity, and the number of cases keeps growing exponentially. The death and disaster that are going to occur in the coming weeks will be beyond comprehension even if we maintain tight restrictions. Loosening the guidelines will only make things worse.

Stay home. The economy will recover once the public health emergency is finally under control, and not a day sooner.