Coronavirus: Donald Trump chooses economy over pandemic concerns

Donald Trump wants the US back at work despite health experts’ alarm at the soaring rate of coronavirus infections and deaths.

Donald Trump wants the US open again by Easter. Picture. AP.

Donald Trump wants the US to be opened up and “raring to go” in just over two weeks, despite the soaring rate of coronavirus infections and deaths in the country.

“We have to go back to work, much sooner than people thought,” the president said, adding that he “would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter (April 12).”

“Our people are full of vim and vigour and energy. They don’t want to be locked into a house or an apartment or some space,” Mr Trump said in an interview at the White House. “It’s not for our country, and we are not built that way.”

His comments were greeted with alarm by health experts and by some state governors who say social distancing policies which keep people at home are the only way to slow the spread of the virus.

Social distancing policies are being followed by other countries around the world including in Europe, the UK and Australia with India locking down its entire population of 1.3 billion, but the president said the human cost of economic disaster in the US would be greater than the virus.

Mr Trump has said he will review social distancing guidelines when the 15 day social distancing plan expires at the end of this week but his comments suggest he is willing to defy his health advisers and try to rescue the fast-closing US economy.

“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,” Mr Trump said.

“I’m sure that we have doctors that would say ‘let’s keep it closed for two years’. No, we’ve got to get it open … this cure is worse than the problem.”

He said the US would lose more lives by “putting the country into a massive recession or depression.”

“The other people, you’re going to have suicide by the thousands, you’re going to have all sorts of things happen, you’re going to have instability. You can’t just come in and say let’s close up the United States of America, the biggest, the most successful country in the world by far.

“The faster we go back, the better it’s going to be.”

He cited deaths from the flu and from automobile accidents and other big killers which do not shut down the country.

“We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu. We don’t turn the country off,” Mr Trump said.

“We lose much more than that to automobile accidents. We don’t call up the automobile companies and say stop making cars. We have to get back to work.”

A deserted New York Stock Exchange. Picture: AP.

His comments came as the infection and death rate from coronavirus in the US continued to spike with more than 50,000 infections and 649 deaths.

His likely Democratic presidential opponent Joe Biden expressed dismay at Mr Trump’s comments. “What is he talking about?’ Mr Biden said of the proposal to relax social distancing within weeks.

Several Republican state governors that have adopted strict social distancing guidelines in their states also took issue with Mr Trump’s comments.

“Protecting people and protecting the economy are not mutually exclusive,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said. “The fact is, we save our economy by first saving lives. And we have to do it in that order.”

He said if hospitals and the population became overwhelmed by the virus then that would prevent any economic recovery.

“When people are dying, when people don’t feel safe, this economy is not going to come back,” he said. “That’s why we have to flatten that curve and do everything we can to separate ourselves from others so that when that wave comes — and we know it’s coming — we’re prepared for it.’

Pentagon chiefs said they expected the virus to continue to take its toll on the country for months. Defence Secretary Mark Esper estimated it could take up to 10 weeks, while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Mark Milley said he expected the military to be dealing with the virus for at least the next three months.

Mr Trump has been alarmed by the freefall in the US economy over the past two weeks as bars and restaurants shut their doors, service industries grind to a halt along and entire industries including aviation and tourism face bankruptcy.

Morgan Stanley now says it expects the US economy to shrink by an annualised rate of 30 per cent in the second quarter of this year and the unemployment rate to jump from 3.5 per cent to 13 per cent.

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia