Slow and Steady- a Plan to Re-open the Nation’s Economy
At his daily coronavirus briefing on Thursday, April 16th, President Donald Trump presented to the nation his recommendations on who, how, when and where our shuttered economy can once again reopen its doors and see the light of day. In slow and measured steps, the plan presented mapped a pathway in which our several states can ease their way back into the state of “normalcy” which existed prior to the arrival of the coronavirus. Stressing that the states’ governors would be deciding on the “when,” the president’s plan laid out a three-staged format based upon well-defined thresholds, or gateways, of bi-weekly and consecutive reductions in the numbers of those diagnosed with COVID-19.
Essentially, the first threshold is met when a state has two consecutive weeks of reduced diagnoses and would then make that state eligible to enter the first phase. If, two weeks later, the state has not seen a bounce-back in the numbers of those diagnosed, and has continued to see a consecutive drop in those numbers, then the state could progress to phase two. Similarly, a continued reduction for another two weeks would qualify the state to advance to the third threshold and, from there, they would be essentially back to where they had been prior to China’s most unwelcomed “gift” to the world.
With each advancing threshold and phase, restrictions are gradually lifted with regards to everything from social distancing and self-sequestration to workplace and retail re-opening. The president stressed that the attainment of each threshold is to be “data-driven,” and not “date-driven.” By far, the best news of the evening was when the President indicated that several states were well along the way into the progression and could begin proceeding along its structured guidelines, immediately.
Critics of this plan fall into two basic categories.
Libertarians feel that a “light-switch” approach of suddenly opening everything at once is what is needed most, and that the President is giving far too much control to task force Drs. Brix and Fauci. Yet, the problem with the libertarian argument is that such an immediate and sudden re-opening of the nation’s economy would very much risk the sudden resurgence and rising death toll, which would result from the widespread infection that would ensue. Such a resurgence would fall on the President’s shoulders for enabling such a recurrence to take place.
Conversely, Democrats and other liberals decry the lack of a single, nationwide, and continued quarantine until such time as a vaccine be made available to everyone, across the nation. Democrats think that the President is acting with reckless abandon, with only his own re-election in mind. The problem with the Democrat argument is that waiting for a vaccine- one that is still a year off- would place this country into a depression far worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. With the nation immersed into such an economic calamity, it is hard to see how Donald Trump could win re-election, and so such duplicity on the part of Democrats becomes easily transparent.
Essentially, both positions hold little regard for the overall well-being of a nation which has witnessed over twenty million layoffs in the last three or four weeks- numbers which rival the jobless numbers of the early 1930s, though as a percentile, not as pervasive…not yet. Politically speaking, Trump would be crazy to follow either approach, by risking a widespread resurgence of the virus or condemning this nation into the worst depression in its history.
So, instead of following the cacophony of his critics on both sides, the President has put forth a reasonable, balanced and yet careful plan to re-open this nation’s economy in a way that at once protects the health of the American people and steadily reinvigorates a dead economy. Realizing that there is an undeniable difference between the densely-populated and crowded northeastern states, which have not yet reached the threshold to phases one and two, and the less densely-populated and more spacious western states, which are well along the way to reaching phases two and three of the plan, the President and his administrative task force have devised a scheme which at once recognizes the broad diversity of our states and localities, and yet still protects the public at large. It provides a balanced and steady approach to unleashing the nation’s pent-up economy, over a period of several weeks, instead of several months.
In our youth, we spent a couple of summers managing a swimming pool throughout its summer season, which went from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Closing down the swimming pool, and storing the pool’s furniture, occupied the Tuesday after Labor Day. Preparing the swimming pool, and re-setting and repairing the pool’s furniture invariably took the better part of a week, prior to the Memorial Day weekend re-opening, as anyone familiar with pool operations can readily attest.
So, comparatively speaking, if the nation’s economy is to once again thrive and prosper, safely and steadily, does it not make sense to follow along the same lines?
Critics of the President are as “thick as thieves” in the night, but we have yet to see any semblance of a better approach than the one the President has proffered. So, what it comes down to is this- do his critics hate Trump more than they love their country?
Well, do they?
-Drew Nickell, 17 April 2020
© 2020 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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