Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Economic rebound predicted
20% growth expected by next quarter, Kudlow says
Despite the recent surge in coronavirus cases and deaths, White House senior staff members Sunday painted a rosy picture of the country rebounding from the crisis. The U.S. economy is still set for a third-quarter recovery, and the impact of the virus surge in Sun Belt states on crimping growth will be limited, they said.
As of Sunday, the United States had more than 4.2 million confirmed cases, according to the count by John Hopkins University. The death total neared 147,000.
“I don’t deny that some of these hot-spot states are going to moderate that recovery, but on the whole the picture is very positive and I still think the V-shaped recovery is in place,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on CNN’s “State of the Union,”
referring to how a quick rebound would look on a bar chart.
“And I still think it’s going to be 20% growth rate in the third and fourth quarters,” he added.
Kudlow aligned with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who told Fox News he expects a major rebound after a historic slump in the quarter that ended June 30.
“We always have [known] the second quarter was going to be a very bad quarter. Again, that’s not for economic reasons. That’s for health reasons. We literally shut down the entire economy,” Mnuchin said. “The third quarter, the consensus is 17% GDP [growth], so we do think you’re going to see a very big rebound.”
The comments contrast with warning signs that the pandemic recovery could be faltering as covid-19 cases surge and the U.S. death toll exceeded 1,000 on four days last week.
Kudlow said the virus surge in the populous states of Florida, Texas and California will lead to “a moderation of this recovery — no question.” Yet other indicators, such as housing, retail sales and auto sales, paint a brighter picture, he said.
“First of all, I don’t think the economy is going south — I think it’s going north,” said Kudlow. “There are some key states, yes, California and Texas and Florida, that are having hot-spot difficulties right now, but it’s nothing like it was last winter.”
“The states are in charge of” containing the virus, he said. “Each state has a different story. Most of the states are doing rather well in this.”
STAY TUNED
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows also suggested progress Sunday, saying new therapies for treating the coronavirus could be unveiled this week.
Speaking on ABC News’s “This Week,” Meadows provided no details on what the therapies might involve or who was developing them. But he maintained that the key to defeating the virus would ultimately come down to “American ingenuity” more than mandates requiring people to wear masks, maintain social distancing or keep businesses closed.
The White House’s coronavirus testing coordinator conceded Sunday that turnaround times for diagnostic testing should improve, promising better times this week.
In an interview Sunday on “State of the Union,” Adm. Brett Giroir blamed “large commercial labs that perform about half the testing in our country.”
“I started out by saying that we are never going to be happy with testing until we get turnaround times within 24 hours, and I would be happy with point-of-care testing everywhere,” Giroir said, referring to when sample collection and testing occur in the same place. “We are not there yet. We are doing everything we can to do that.”
He defended testing capacity, saying “no one is trying to stop testing in this country,” when asked about Trump’s remarks that he had instructed officials to slow testing out of concern that it would highlight the spread of the virus.
SCHOOL CHOICE
As many of the nation’s largest school districts have already announced that students won’t immediately return to in-person instruction in the fall, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Sunday that the administration does not believe there should be uniform thresholds to meet for schools to reopen.
“Each community is going to have to make the determination about the circumstances for reopening and what steps they take for reopening, but the presumption should be we get our kids back to school,” Azar told CBS News.
But schools that reopen may not be able to stay open if cases surge again in those communities, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden warned.
“The hard part is opening them and keeping them open,” Frieden said on “Fox News Sunday.”
NEW HIGHS
As of Sunday afternoon, the seven-day averages for new cases hit fresh highs in several states, including Alaska, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Nevada and South Carolina set records for their seven-day averages of daily deaths, and Mississippi and North Carolina tied their previous highs.
In Texas, the seven-day average for cases was 8,302 on Saturday as Hurricane Hanna roared ashore on the Texas coast. Winds, torrential rain and storm surges left a path of destruction in an area already ravaged by coronavirus infections.
Elsewhere in Texas, bar owners reopened Saturday night, defying a June 26 order by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to shut down. Fort Worth bar owner and “Freedom Fest” protest organizer Chris Polone said in a video posted on Facebook that out of the roughly 800 bar owners who participated, not one was penalized by authorities.
Fort Worth’s Tarrant County has reported 24,562 coronavirus cases, 3,367 more since last week.
The surge in cases comes as states wrestle with reopening their economies or imposing greater public health restrictions to slow the spread of the virus.
In Florida, the secretary of the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Halsey Beshears, signaled that he planned to start talking with bars and breweries about how they can return to business. His announcement came as Florida’s average number of deaths rose for the third straight day.
Florida surpassed New York over the weekend as the state with the second-most cases in the U.S., as more than 9,300 new cases were reported Sunday, accompanied by an additional 78 deaths.
Florida’s 423,855 coronavirus cases as of Sunday were surpassed only by California’s 453,659 cases. New York, once the epicenter of the virus in the U.S., had 411,736 cases.
Florida had 5,972 total deaths, according to the state’s Department of Health.
The statewide median age of coronavirus patients in Florida was 40.
ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD
In Spain, nightclubs, bars and beaches — some of the country’s most beloved summer venues — are facing new lockdown restrictions after turning into coronavirus hot spots, and some European nations are warning citizens not to visit the country.
The northeast regions of Catalonia and Aragon host the three most worrying virus clusters in Spain, prompting authorities to tighten restrictions in Barcelona, in a rural area around Lleida and in Zaragoza that were relaxed only a month ago when Spain had its devastating outbreak in check.
Britain put Spain back on its unsafe list beginning Sunday, announcing that travelers arriving in the U.K. from Spain must now quarantine for 14 days. Norway also ordered a 10-day quarantine for those returning from the Iberian Peninsula. France and Belgium are recommending that travelers ditch plans to spend their summer vacations in Barcelona and its nearby beaches, which have seen crowds too large to allow for social distancing.
In North Korea, a “maximum” national emergency was declared and the city of Kaesong near the border with South Korea was locked down after what could be the North’s first coronavirus case, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Sunday. North Korea said the patient illegally crossed the border from South Korea last week and said virus screening results are “uncertain.”
Information for this article was contributed by Meryl Kornfield, Marisa Iati and Christian Davenport of The Washington Post; by Joseph Wilson, Danica Kirka, John Leicester and staff members of of The Associated Press; and by Tony Czuczka and Yueqi Yang of Bloomberg News.