Trump: Open Up America Again - The Plan

ECONOMY MAGA, Meet OUAA MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images Yesterday, President Trump released Opening Up America Again, a framework to help states ease lockdown restrictions. At a press conference last night, Trump said he would leave it to governors to determine when to swing the gates open. But he also said, “We must have a working economy, and we want to get it back very, very quickly.”  WH coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx unveiled a three-phase plan where “all vulnerable individuals” stay home and employees return to work gradually. To enter each phase, states have to meet "gating" thresholds that may be declining documented cases or a decreasing percentage of positive tests.   Phase 1: A limited group of businesses like restaurants and movie theaters are allowed to reopen while schools remain closed and vulnerable people stay home. Phase 2: Schools can reopen and non-essential travel can resume. Phase 3: Vulnerable people can resume public interactions while practicing social distancing.  Sounds good, right? Lots of Americans are eager to get back to the old normal. If you’re not, your name is Larry David. But there’s a major issue: testing Public health officials, lawmakers, and business leaders are concerned the U.S. can’t test people at the scale necessary to responsibly send us back to work.  In the entirety of the crisis, the U.S. has conducted nearly 3.5 million tests. Experts say we need to test millions per week before we get back to working IRL in any significant capacity. If the U.S. eases restrictions too early, medical authorities say, it risks spurring a second wave of infections that overwhelms the healthcare system. In fact, a second wave of COVID-19 infections is hitting northern Japan right now. Zoom out: Earlier this week, Trump said that he had “total authority” over when to reopen. Now he's deferring to governors, showing that the pandemic requires locally tailored responses.