President Donald Trump confirms that a second coronavirus task force is in the works. When asked on Saturday by Dana Perino at Fox, about a tweet he sent earlier, suggesting an economy focused task force is about to be empaneled, Trump agreed that he is “considering” it. Health and safety still come first but we need to get ready for action.
President confirms we’re getting ready for action
Top White House officials are “thinking about it,” the President confirms. They’re “getting a group of people and we have to open our country.” Sooner or later the lockdowns will end and America will get back to work, along with the rest of the world. “The cure can’t be worse than the problem itself. Right?”
President Trump reminded everyone that he’s been trying to prep everyone for recovery for a while now. “I started by saying that and I continue to say it. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. We’ve got to get our country open.”
Recently, the administration has been balancing what they can do to re-open the economy against the need to protect American lives. Health and safety are absolutely the top priorities. Once those are under full control again, then we need to be ready to come racing out of the starting blocks. That will take preparation.
A phased in system at first
The current focus of discussions along economic recovery lines is a “phased system based on age or geographic location.” They’re kicking around some alternative ideas too, like, “a system that targets specific types of workers to return to work.” For instance, those “who drive themselves and don’t work in large groups” may be allowed to return to work first.
President Trump confirms that any form of “tiered reopening” isn’t going to work before at least the April 30 end of current slow-the-spread guidelines.
Dr. Anthony Fauci brought some good news with him to Saturday’s briefing. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director announced that “social distancing guidelines have been working.” The “important tool” has halted the Covid-19 spread for now.
Our most important tool
Dr. Fauci also confirms that President Trump’s goal of an Easter economic resurrection was well intentioned. He called it an “aspirational projection,” meaning something to aspire to. It just wasn’t practical. We’ll just aspire for May 1 now. “Viruses transmit from people to people,” Fauci notes. Separating people stops transmission of the virus and keeps it from going anywhere. That’s why its “our most important tool.”
At the same time, for the past three weeks, our economy has been going through the shutdown phase of a hard-restart. We’re still waiting for all the background programs to close before everything goes dark and stops spinning. Almost at the same instant, things will spring back to life when we’re released from captivity on the couch.
It’s going to take a while for all the services to start running again, and the applications to boot back up. Some day in the not too distant future, we’ll be fully back in operation with an upgraded operating system and ready for American action again.