TRUMP CALLS AMERICANS ‘WARRIORS’ IN VIRUS FIGHT
Concedes lives will be lost in effort to reopen country
WASHINGTON
Donald Trump has described himself as a “wartime president” during the coronavirus crisis, and now he has called on Americans to join the fight as he pushes the country to reopen despite the risks.
In recent days, he’s begun describing citizens as “warriors” in the battle against the pandemic and suggested some of those fighters may have to die if that will help boost the economy.
“Will some people be affected? Yes,” he said on a trip to Arizona this week, his first outside of the Washington area in nearly two months. “Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open, and we have to get it open soon.”
Trump had previously described health care workers as “warriors” for risking their safety to treat coronavirus patients, wording he used again on Wednesday when signing a proclamation honoring nurses.
But his decision to expand the characterization to everyday Americans is a shift from his previous declarations that “one is too many” deaths. The toll from the illness surpassed 70,000 this week and seems on track to top 100,000 by the end of the month, numbers far larger than Trump recently predicted.
Asked Wednesday if the nation needs to accept greater loss of life, Trump said “hopefully it won’t be the case, but it may very well be the case.”
“We have to be warriors,” he said from his seat behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. “We can’t keep our country closed down for years.”
The new language shows Trump appears to view people as “collateral damage to salvage the economy,” said Jeffrey Levi, a public health expert at George Washington University.
“Good generals do not send their soldiers into battle without knowing that there will be a net gain,” Levi said. “And here we know reopening too soon will be a net loss, both in lives and the longterm stability of the economy.”
Trump’s emphasis on restarting commerce conflicts with numerous polls that show large majorities of the public wanting to go slow on any move to reopen. It could also be ineffective, as the polling shows that many consumers may not be willing to venture into stores, restaurants and other businesses, even if governments allow them to open. Although COVID-19 numbers have declined in some parts of the country, including New York and some parts of California, they’re on the rise elsewhere.
Trump has worked with public health officials on a plan to allow states to slowly loosen restrictions on businesses and public gatherings once caseloads decline, but he’s often appeared impatient with the cautious pace and encouraged protests against guidelines set by his own administration.
Now his allies are echoing the message that some death is inevitable as businesses reopen.
“Americans are courageous, and we’re going to face risk in order to fight this. We can’t let COVID-19 destroy us, and if we stay home, we continue to stay home, it’s going to destroy us,” Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, told Fox Business on Wednesday.
Giuliani was mayor during the Sept. 11 attacks, and he compared the virus to a slow-motion terrorist assault.
“We still may get hit by some bombs, but it’s less dangerous than it was before,” he said.
However, Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said there’s no valor in sacrificing people’s lives to fight the pandemic.
“People who are dying of this virus are not dying to protect the American way of life,” he said. “They’re dying because their government has had a completely ineffective response to this infectious disease.”
If Americans are being considered warriors, Jha said, Trump is sending them onto the battlefield without the testing and contact tracing required for protection.
“He has left Americans disarmed,” he said. “He’s not given the American people the tools they need to fight this virus.”
Megerian writes for the Los Angeles Times.