US expert warns about dangers of opening businesses too soon

A top US health official said on Tuesday that if states ignore federal guidelines on reopening during the novel coronavirus pandemic, the United States would experience “suffering and death” that could have been avoided.

The US would be at risk of new outbreaks and even a significant resurgence nationally if states and cities reopen too quickly, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He spoke in video testimony before a Senate committee.

Fauci said there also is a risk of more economic damage from ignoring guidelines, which recommend delaying the reopening of most businesses until there are dramatic declines in cases.

Fauci also cautioned that the number of deaths from the COVID19 pandemic in the US is likely higher than the reported number, adding that it is “entirely conceivable and possible” that a second virus wave will happen this fall.

The hearing before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee came as more than two dozen US states have begun to lift their lockdowns as a first step toward resuming economic activities.

Worries about keeping the economy in limbo are growing after US employers cut 20.5 million jobs in April, a record-shattering number that pushed unemployment to 14.7 percent, the highest level since the

Great Depression. US President Donald Trump has supported states’ reopening of businesses. He tweeted on Tuesday: “Our Testing is the BEST in the World, by FAR! Numbers are coming down in most parts of our Country, which wants to open and get going again. It is happening, safely!”

Several mask-wearing committee members were at the Capitol for the testimony, though Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican, chaired the hearing by video from the study in his cabin in Tennessee.

“Even under the best of circumstances, when you pull back on mitigation, you will see some cases appear,” Fauci said.

Fauci, a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, testified while self-quarantining after a White House staffer tested positive for the virus on May 7.

The coronavirus outbreak had infected 1,369,964 million people in the US, with 82,387 deaths as of early Wednesday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Globally, the university’s tally said more than 4.2 million people were infected by the virus.

“If you think we have it completely under control, no we don’t,” Fauci said.

“If you look at the dynamics of the outbreak, we are seeing a diminution of hospitalizations and infections in some places such as in New York City, which has plateaued and is starting to come down, but in other parts of the country, we are seeing spikes,” he said.

In commenting on Fauci’s testimony, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “I do want to stress, as the president has stressed, that we do want to reopen this country because there are consequences that run the other way when we stay closed down as a country.”

J. Stephen Morrison, director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, said the US public remains uneasy about a premature lifting of shelter-in-place orders.

“There remains deep tension between public health safety on the one hand and a desire, understandable desire, to exit the economic crisis and see a reopening of business and schools,” he said on Thursday.

James H. Stock, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, said that while reopening the economy is urgently needed, doing so in a way that leads to a second wave of deaths and a subsequent second shutdown could result in damage that is lasting and profound.

“Low-contact, high-value workplaces should be reopened quickly, and returning workers must feel safe,” Stock suggested in a report submitted to a Brookings Institution webinar on Tuesday titled “Reopening the coronavirus-closed economy”.

“Some high-contact activities might need to be suspended indefinitely.”