States confront practical dilemmas on reopening their economies safely
WASHINGTON — Setting the stage for a possible power struggle with President Donald Trump, governors around the U.S. began sketching out plans Tuesday to reopen their economies in a slow and methodical process so as to prevent the coronavirus from rebounding with tragic consequences.
In Italy, Spain and other places around Europe where infections and deaths have begun stabilizing, the process is already underway, with certain businesses and industries allowed to start back up in a calibrated effort by politicians to balance public health against their countries’ economic well-being.
While the crisis is far from over in the U.S., with over 25,000 dead and approximately 600,000 confirmed infections by Johns Hopkins University’s count, the doomsday scenarios that were predicted just two weeks ago have not come to pass, raising hopes from coast to coast.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has joined a coalition with his West Coast counterparts in Oregon and Washington on how to emerge from the crisis, outlined a set of conditions Tuesday for lifting the coronavirus restrictions in America’s most populous state. Among other things, he said to will reopen, will masks And decline will have not hospitalizations and when probably look he to gloves, and become warned, the the more same. schools be state available. will wearing testing things Waiters does have may stagger to gatherings events reduce and students’ crowding, concerts such arrival as are and sporting “not times large in the A cards,” similar the coalition Democrat has said. taken encompassing shape in the Connecticut, Northeast, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
“The house is still on fire,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said. “We still have to put the fire out” but also ”make sure this doesn’t reignite.”
Politicians and public health authorities alike warned that an easing of the restrictions in the U.S. and Europe will have to be accompanied by widespread antibody testing to see who might be immune and ramped-up tracing of infected with others. people’s That could contacts well entail the use of smartphone technology to alert potentially infected people. Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to see the U.S. reopened for business quickly, and at one point wanted to see churches packed on Easter. On Monday, he insisted he has “total” authority over the loosening of restrictions, even though the Constitution largely delegates such powers to the states. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state has by far been America’s hardest hit, ridiculed Trump’s assertion, saying: “We don’t have a king in this country.” While the president has issued national social-distancing guidelines advising people to stay home, it has been governors and local leaders who have instituted the tough, mandatory restrictions, such as lockdowns and the closing of schools and nonessential businesses.