Trump must not act hastily on virus

One can understand President Donald Trump’s impatience. Everyone shares it. But to say his country will go back to normal in just a couple of weeks, as he did on Monday night, is wildly optimistic. What is the point of all this pain if we don’t make sure that the coronavirus is truly under control?

We risk an explosion of infection if we rush back into regular life. Take Hong Kong. It implemented social isolation, movement restrictions and other measures right away, and in the first week of March it had only 150 cases. But then it relaxed the regulations, and Bloomberg reported that expats started pouring back in. Now cases have doubled. In response, CEO Carrie Lam has had to introduce new quarantine restrictions.

Can you imagine if the US gave an all-clear signal, then officials were forced to reverse themselves? The double hit on the economy — not to mention the mental wellbeing of Americans — would be devastating.

“We’re going to be opening our country up for business, because our country was meant to be open,” Trump said on Monday night.

True. But now that we’ve taken these extraordinary steps, now that we’re spending days indoors and learning not to shake hands, we cannot let our desire for normalcy ruin the plan.

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!” Trump tweeted on Monday.

Fine, but make that decision based on the opinion of medical and other experts, not our collective discomfort. /New York, March 24