The group that was originally designed to counteract the advice of public-health professionals wound up giving Trump the exact same advice. jonathanchait writes
Photo: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images The Trump administration has been torn between a faction that takes public-health concerns seriously, and one that wishes to disregard it. The pro-public-health faction has argued that the country cannot resume normal economic activity until the public has some reassurances of safety, which can only be achieved through a combination of widespread testing, tracing, and perhaps effective remedies.
The task force was designed around a fallacy that has taken hold among conservatives. According to this line of thinking, the economy can be quickly “reopened,” the cost of which will either be minimal or at least acceptable . The flaw in this thinking is its assumption that it is practical to reopen the economy without containing the virus. There is little evidence to believe individuals or businesses will reenter public spaces in the absence of reliable technology to protect them.
By the beginning of this week, the “task force” had evolved from a collection of Trump officials skeptical of public health to an “advisory panel” including outside business leaders. “Senior White House officials briefed President Trump on Monday about his looming decision regarding how to eventually jump-start the economy, presenting him with a list of 100 business executives that could serve in an advisory panel,” reported the Post Monday.
This line from the same report might be one of the most incriminating sentences ever published about this president: “Trump’s advisers are trying to shield the president from political accountability should his move to reopen the economy prove premature and result in lost lives, and so they are trying to mobilize business executives, economists and other prominent figures to buy into the eventual White House plan, so that if it does not work, the blame can be shared broadly, according to two...
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