generalspeaking

Raring to Return to Business as Usual

"If you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy, then it's no contest."
"No American is going to say accelerate the economy at the cost of human life."
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

“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!" 
"We’ll get a pretty good idea what we’re doing [at the end of his 15 Days to Slow the Spread [campaign on March 31]."
“You know there will be a point at which we say: ‘We’re back in business, let’s go'."
U.S. President Donald Trump

"My message: let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living, let’s be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves."
"Don’t sacrifice the country.Don’t do that.”
"You know, Tucker, no one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren'," And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in."
"That doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me."
"I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed. I’ve talked to hundreds of people … and everyone says pretty much the same thing: We can’t lose our whole country. We’re having an economic collapse."
"We’re going to be in a total collapse, recession, depression, collapse in our society if this goes on for another several months. As the president said, the mortality rate is so low. Do we have to shut down the entire country for this? I think we can get back to work."
"Look, I’m going to do everything I can do to live. But if you said, are you willing to take a chance … If I get sick, I’ll go and try to get better, but if I don’t, I don’t."
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick

The passion of histrionics, the dedication of believers. All hail the business ethnic, the free enterprise system. As the World Health Organization projected their considered opinion that the United States may very well emerge as the epicentre of the global pandemic striking out on all rounded corners of the world, the reality is fast sinking in and in corporate America -- much like the rest of the world, witnessing their GDP shrinking disastrously, burgeoning unemployment and the need to invoke national security to lend heavily and guarantee support to banks, corporations, employers -- panic is setting in.

Exemplified in that a one-track American president is pressing a case for the reopening of the nation's economy in a few weeks' time; a welcome Easter gift, as he puts it longingly. The Governor of New York State isn't so convinced at all, that the limits on travel, socializing and working would be the wise course for a country to take while its population is being battered by the wild rampage of a bedeviling virus running amok. Governor Cuomo's response dampening President Trump's enthusiasm is obviously not universally shared, witness Texas Lt.Gen. Patrick's sacrificial message.

Perspective can be everything; Patrick's majority of one as opposed to a governor whose state has been the worst hit by the novel coronavirus where over 50,000 people have been infected across the nation, with 660 dead, and in New York the death toll from COVID-19 reached 157, and the shortage of hospital beds is beyond worrying. In New York alone the rate of infection doubles every three days with the apex anticipated in 14 to 21 days.

State officials and financial investors in New York are united in warning against easing up on restrictions too precipitately. But for the president the focus is on winning re-election in November and a collapse of the economy will not win him plaudits. He is considering how to restart business after the 14-day lockdown ends in a week's time, the contagious viral spread aside, poorly equipped hospitals notwithstanding. "I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter."

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens during a Coronavirus Task Force news conference in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Stefani Reynolds/CNP/Bloomberg