Coronavirus: Financial pain is such that many Americans feel they can’t afford to wait any longer to reopen economy

US President Donald Trump in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

Americans are now confronting the most dangerous phase of the coronavirus pandemic as they begin to reopen the world’s largest economy without having first subdued the deadly virus.

The contrast with Australia could not be more stark. Both countries are moving to restart their economies after months of lockdown but only one has succeeded in defeating the virus first.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When the US went into virtual lockdown in mid-March it was anticipated that the virus would be on a solid downward trajectory by now, as in Australia. Not defeated perhaps, but conquered enough via two months of social distancing, to allow for a semi-safe re-opening of the US economy.

But social distancing has not worked as well as was expected in America and now the clock has run out. While social distancing helped to flatten the curve to the extent that America’s medical system did not collapse under the weight of infected patients, it has not led to the falls in infections and deaths that health experts had initially hoped for.

The rate of new infections and deaths has remained stubbornly high and while hotspots like New York and Detroit are finally improving, rates continue to rise in other places like Los Angeles, Chicago and the Washington DC area.

The virus continues to rage across the country taking around 2000 lives each day with the final death toll likely to be close to double the current number of 80,000 dead.

Yet with 33 million Americans unemployed and a fast-rising unemployment rate of 14.7 per cent, the highest since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the financial pressure to reopen is not just increasing, it is becoming overwhelming.

Donald Trump has made up his mind that the economy is now the most important priority and is encouraging state governors to reopen their states. More than 40 of the 50 governors have now taken tentative steps to do so with only those governors in the hardest hit states like New York and New Jersey staying completely locked down for now.

Polls show that two thirds of Americans still fear the virus more than the closed economy but the process of reopening the economy in many parts of the country is already underway and momentum is building.

Public health officials who warn that this reopening will create a devastating second wave of infections in the coming months are being increasingly sidelined in the debate.

As the Washington Post put it; “The administration is effectively bowing to — and asking Americans to accept — a devastating proposition: that a steady, daily accumulation of lonely deaths is the grim cost of reopening the nation’’.

The US economy will continue to reopen in stages, restoring at least some of the many millions of jobs and livelihoods that have been lost in this pandemic.

The grim truth is that the looming cost in lives of restarting the economy without having won the war against coronavirus could be fateful.

Yet for a growing number of Americans, the financial pain is such that they feel they cannot afford to wait any longer.

(Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia)