The Associated Press is reporting President Donald Trump is hoping to have the country open and operating again as usual as soon as Easter.
“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” Trump said during a Fox News virtual town hall Tuesday.
The AP said as many public health officials call for stricter, not looser restrictions on public interactions, Trump said he was already looking toward easing the advisories that have sidelined workers, shuttered schools and led to a widespread economic slowdown.
The AP also reported that health experts have made clear that unless Americans continue to dramatically limit social interaction — staying home from work and isolating themselves — the number of infections will overwhelm the health care system, as it has in parts of Italy, leading to many more deaths. While the worst outbreaks are concentrated in certain parts of the country, such as New York, experts warn that the highly infectious disease is certain to spread.
The U.S. is now more than a week into an unprecedented 15-day effort to encourage all Americans to drastically scale back their public activities, the AP reported.
“I gave it two weeks,” Trump said. He also argued that tens of thousands of Americans die from the seasonal flu or in automobile accidents and that “we don’t turn the country off.”
“We’ll assess at that time and we’ll give it some more time if we need a little more time, but we need to open this country up,” Trump added. “We have to go back to work, much sooner than people thought.”
The AP reported that this reassessment comes as the White House is encouraging lawmakers on Capitol Hill to pass a roughly $2 trillion stimulus package to ease the financial pain for Americans and hard-hit industries.