Devastating unemployment data expected Friday will show why Trump is on firm ground in arguing that the economy cannot stay closed much longer given the more than 30 million livelihoods being destroyed in shutdowns ordered to slow the spread of the virus.
But in his haste to convince states to get back to normal, the President appears to be trampling warnings about an increased death toll and precautions that could permit a stage-by-stage opening but would be unlikely to produce the quick economic resurgence he seeks.
The White House said the rejected CDC guidelines suggest that all states face the same level of threat from the virus. That reasoning, however, ignores the fact that one state may have more cases than another but the virus acts the same whether it’s in New York or Tennessee if people are not sitting at a safe distance in a restaurant, for instance.
The sidelining of the CDC guidelines effectively leaves states and businesses on their own in deciding on how to best protect workers and customers — and deprives them of the kind of expert medical advice needed in an epochal pandemic.
The move comes in a week in which Trump has pivoted from stressing the medical challenge from the pandemic — which is still raging, and getting worse in some states — and concentrated more on the need to reopen the economy as soon as possible.
Unlike in previous health crises, this White House has rarely used top CDC officials as a trusted voice of scientific rigor. Trump, who prefers to keep the spotlight on himself, has shown his medical understanding to be rudimentary while touting unproven therapies and poor predictions about the pandemic.
Richard Besser, a former acting director of the CDC, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Thursday that the agency’s reopening guidance “makes a lot of sense” and that states wanted it.
“During a public health crisis, one of the most critical success factors is trust. Does the public trust the leaders, that they are doing things to protect their health?” he asked.
“You get that trust by being transparent, by going with the public health science, by having your public health leaders out there answering tough questions from the media.”
