Coronavirus US: Trump pledges to ‘build up’ country while resisting calls for national shutdown

Donald Trump has issued a defiant pledge even as he resists calls for a nationwide shutdown to stop the spread of coronavirus.

US President Donald Trump is resisting calls to issue a national stay-at-home order to stem the spread of the new coronavirus despite his administration’s projections that tens of thousands of Americans are likely to be killed by the disease.

One by one, though, states are increasingly pushing shutdown orders of their own.

Mr Trump said earlier this week he and members of his administration had discussed issuing a stay-at-home order but it was “pretty unlikely” for now.

The White House later released “sobering” new projections that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans would likely succumb to the coronavirus even if current social distancing guidelines were maintained.

Speaking at a daily press briefing on Wednesday, Mr Trump issued a defiant pledge that after the country emerged from the crisis “we're going to build it up fast”.

"Together we're going to win this war and the sooner we do, the sooner we can begin to rebuild and we're ready to rebound and return to normal lives," he said.

"We went from the best economy in the history of the world, the best economy that this country has ever seen, the best employment numbers we've ever had – almost 160 million people working – to a point where the professionals came to me and they say, 'Sir, you're going to have to shut the country down.' I said, 'What does that mean?' They said, 'Sir, you're going to have to shut it down.'

"We're going to build it up but I think we're going to build it up fast. I think we're going to have a tremendous rebound. There's a great energy and a great pent-up demand."

Donald Trump with Vice President Mike Pence. Picture: Alex Brandon/AP

Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Wednesday the nation’s federalist system left much of the authority on how to properly respond to catastrophes to individual state governors and local officials.

“We trust the governors and the mayors to understand their people and understand whether or not they feel like they can trust the people in their states to make the right decisions,” he said on ABC’s Good Morning America.

On Wednesday alone, three more states – Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania – added or expanded their stay-at-home orders.

But the invocation of federalism in the midst of a crisis that threatens a nationwide body count on par with some of the deadliest American wars suggests Mr Trump and his advisers are cognisant of the political ramifications of their response.

Republican governors in states such as Florida, Texas and Nebraska have questioned the necessity of applying strong social distancing rules to rural and regional areas that haven’t reported much evidence of the virus so far.

The lack of a unified, 50-state response also collides with evidence emerging that coronavirus infections are being spread by people who have no clear symptoms, complicating efforts to gain control of the pandemic.

A study conducted by researchers in Singapore and published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday is the latest to estimate about 10 per cent of new coronavirus infections may be spread by people who were infected with the virus but not experiencing symptoms.

A sign on an unusually quiet highway in Monroe, Washington. Picture: Elaine Thompson/AP

Even while deferring to governors, the Trump administration has issued guidelines that have urged Americans to work from home if possible, cancel on-site instruction at schools, and avoid large gatherings.

The resistance to a more robust response comes even as Vice President Mike Pence said White House models for the coronavirus toll show the country on a trajectory akin to hard-hit Italy.

“We think Italy may be the most comparable area to the United States at this point," Mr Pence told CNN.

Italy, which has already recorded more than 13,000 deaths, has issued a nationwide quarantine, shutting down almost all industrial production and offices and largely prohibiting residents from leaving their homes.

The White House’s best-case projection for loss of life assumes statewide stay-at-home orders, according to a senior administration official familiar with Mr Trump’s thinking.

Mr Trump, the official said, was a believer in federalism and it was up to individual governors to set restrictions for their states. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

More than 272 million people live in the 38 states where governors have declared statewide shelter-in-place orders or have recommended residents stay home.

In other states – Iowa, Nebraska and Georgia, among others – governors have resisted state-level decisions, but some localities have declared residents should stay at home.

Those types of local orders cover Atlanta, St Louis and Oklahoma City, along with dozens of other counties and cities.

A pair of cyclists navigate an empty street in downtown Phoenix. Picture: Matt York/AP

According to a poll published Wednesday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 78 per cent of US adults, including 84 per cent of Democrats and 76 per cent of Republicans, favour requiring Americans to stay in their homes except for essential errands.

Americans in states that already had stay-at-home orders in place when the survey began are more likely than those in states that did not to approve of their state’s response, 63 per cent to 51 per cent.

Still, Mr Trump – who has conducted long, near-daily briefings on his administration’s response to the virus outbreak over the past three weeks – has been reluctant so far to use his bully pulpit to urge governors to issue orders that would help effectively create a national quarantine.

But there are signs that Trump administration officials are pushing behind the scenes for holdout governors to issue statewide quarantines.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had resisted issuing a statewide order but reversed course and issued one Wednesday as federal and local pressure mounted for him to abandon the county-by-county approach he had implemented.

Mr DeSantis, a Republican, told reporters he decided to issue the order after consulting with Mr Trump and White House advisers.

Representative Donna Shalala, a Florida Democrat, said earlier Wednesday that Mr Trump should be pressing governors for a unified approach to help stem the spread of the disease, calling his response so far "fragmented, weak and uneven".

“He hasn’t made a national plea to say we’re all in this together, and he hasn’t even talked to the governors about all doing the same thing,” Ms Shalala, who was secretary of health and human services under President Bill Clinton, said in an interview.

Authority to order quarantines inside states rests almost entirely with states under provisions in the US Constitution ceding power not explicitly delegated to the federal government to states, courts have ruled consistently for years.

While the federal government itself can’t order nationwide quarantines or impose quarantines on states, courts say it has clear power under constitutional clauses regulating commerce to quarantine international travellers or those travelling state to state who might be carriers of deadly diseases.

A Washington park closed in response to the coronavirus. Picture: Patrick Semansky/AP

A few legal scholars have argued that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause may vest Mr Trump with powers to impose a multiple state or national lockdown with or without states’ approval, though any such move under that minority interpretation would almost certainly be challenged immediately as unconstitutional.

Mr Pence told CNN leaders and residents of states that hadn’t been hard hit were already taking action to slow the spread of the virus.

In Nebraska, Republican Governor Pete Ricketts says he’s basing his decisions on the advice he gets from public health experts at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which has dealt extensively with outbreaks and served as a quarantine space for ebola patients.

In Iowa, Republican Governor Kim Reynolds has resisted a mandatory shelter-in-place order, saying the data she looks at doesn’t yet justify it in her state.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, another Republican, said her voluntary guidance had helped slow the infection rate.

“The calls to apply a one-size-fits-all approach is herd mentality, it’s not leadership,” she said.

Mr Ricketts, a vocal Trump supporter, has repeatedly said he won’t impose a stay-at-home order in Nebraska but has ordered restaurants either to close their dining areas or allow no more than 10 people inside at once, depending on their location in the state.

In Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott has ordered schools to stay closed until at least May and imposed restrictions that doctors and even his critics say are tantamount to a stay-at-home order for the state. Still, Mr Abbott refused to call it that.

“This is not a stay-at-home strategy. A stay-at-home strategy would mean that you have to stay home,” Mr Abbott said. “This is a standard based upon essential services and essential activities.”

— with Meghan Hoyer, Colleen Long, Dino Hazell, Paul J Weber, Grant Schulte, Brendan Farrington, David Pitt and Stephen Groves