It’s the question everyone is asking: how soon can the Covid-19 social restrictions be lifted?
The answer depends on who you ask.
Epidemiologists and other health professionals say to take it slow. Opening up the country before the coronavirus is beaten could be catastrophic. The pandemic would explode again and many thousands more would die.
But others — particularly some Republicans in Congress, with an eye on the November election — want President Trump to call for re-starting the nation’s stalled economy and get millions of unemployed Americans back to work.
“While most Republicans say the country should go slow and take a regional approach, there’s an unmistakable demand building in the party for the president to move forward,” reports Politico, citing “interviews with more than a dozen GOP members of Congress.”
“It’s a message they’re delivering privately in calls with Trump and his senior advisers, as well as in public op-eds and letters to the administration,” Politico says.
The political news site describes Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), chairman of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, as “one of the most vocal GOP lawmakers calling for an aggressive exit strategy.”
Lifting the lockdowns “should have happened yesterday,” Biggs says.
Some Senate Republicans agree, claiming that in parts of the country the coronavirus infection rate has already peaked.
“We’re extremely unlikely to overwhelm our hospital capacities,” contends Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). “In fact, in a matter of days and in some cases the moment may even have passed, that we’ve reached the peak of the rate of infections.”
For the economy, Toomey says, “This is a completely unsustainable place we’re in.”
Unsurprisingly, most Democrats disagree — they’re “perplexed by this line of thinking,” Politico says — and are likely to try to stop any GOP move to get the country “back to normal” prematurely.
This same debate over health vs. economy is playing out in states and regions across the country.
A University of North Carolina student, Jackson Lanier, posted a link on Twitter to an article about a Facebook group — #ReopenNC — said to have more than 20,000 members. They want virus restrictions lifted within two weeks, by April 29.
“We are losing our small businesses, which are the backbone of our economy,” write the page administrators. “The shutdown is not warranted, nor sustainable for our area. The vulnerable can be isolated or protected in other ways, without sacrificing our entire state economy….”
Lanier’s tweet was deleted shortly after it was posted. It’s unclear why.