National security analyst Juliette Kayyem pointed out on CNN that President Donald Trump’s actual influence on ending state and local coronavirus mitigation decrees and, thus, the reopening of the U.S. economy is, in fact, very limited.
Speaking with Anderson Cooper on Friday night, the former Obama homeland security official made her comments in the wake of increasing signals from both Trump and White House officials — despite public health officials cautioning against it — that they are eyeing early May as the timeframe that they would like to end shelter-in-place and social distancing guidance in order to allow commerce to begin again.
When Cooper asked if these decisions will be mostly made by state governors and mayors instead of the president, Kayyem agreed.
“It will definitely be at tactical level,” she explained. “The President is under mistaken belief he’s relevant to the task at hand. It’s a very odd leadership role he’s taken. He’s not doing the things he ought to do, you know, the surveillance in January and February, getting test kits to the states, preparing all of us for what was about to happen, using the Defense Production Act to get goods into the supply chain. And he’s asserting a not — it literally does not exist — authority that he can tell the governors what to do when it comes to powers reserved to the states: public safety powers, public health powers, quarantine
Cooper then followed up and asked what kinds of criteria public leaders should take into account before restarting their local economies.
“How we think about it is not a date but metrics,” she said. “You want to see increased testing capacity, hopefully treatments come on line so people would be, if they were infected, could have treatments. Want to look at ICU capacity, hospital capacity, and other metrics. I don’t think about a date. I don’t tell my kids about a date. Massachusetts hasn’t even hit peak yet. Then as those metrics are met, you start to think about reopening. It’s not going to be a light switch, people. It’s going to be slow. Start to think about places that are essential, schools, other retail, then the sporting stuff coming at the way end. It’s a very long process.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.