US President Donald Trump said today that the coronavirus pandemic has been “worse” for the United States than the attack on Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, while reiterating the need for gradually reopen the economy.
” This is the worst attack we have ever suffered … This is worse than Pearl Harbor, worse than the World Trade Center. And it should never have happened,” Trump said at the White House with health personnel, referring the Japanese attack of December 1941 that led to the entry of the United States into World War II and the attacks of September 2001, committed by Al Qaeda and in which more than 3,000 people died.
After comparing it with two of the most emblematic external attacks that the country has suffered, the president changed the tone and clarified, in any case, that the closure of the economy and daily life “is not sustainable.”
In addition, he said he would like “schools to reopen as soon as possible”, despite the fact that the pandemic continues to advance at a sustained pace in the country, which for weeks has become the global epicentre of Covid-19 with more than 1.2 million of cases and nearly 73,000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University count.
Trump’s ambiguous speech came at a time when more than half of the country’s states gradually began to lift the restrictive measures imposed to curb the outbreak.
“I do not believe that people support it. I do not believe that the country supports it. It is not sustainable,” the president justified, quoted by the EFE news agency.
Since the beginning of the health crisis, Trump has been eager to relaunch the country’s economy, whose good indicators – which the president had for his re-election in November – collapsed due to the impact of the stoppage caused by the pandemic.
That is why, despite the recommendations of medical experts, Trump urged the governors to withdraw the anti-crisis measures and reactivate their states as soon as possible; an initiative undertaken by several of his co-religionists, such as the governor of Florida, the Republican Ron DeSantis.
With more than 38,000 confirmed cases and more than 1,500 deaths in Florida, the governor began a relaxation of the confinement with the reopening of restaurants and businesses to the street, with the exception of three counties: Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.
Miami-Dade, with 2.7 million inhabitants and almost 70% of the Hispanic population, had 147 new cases in the last 24 hours and has accumulated 13,232 since the first case of Florida’s coronavirus was officially registered on March 1.
Instead, New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy announced today that he will extend the health emergency declaration for a month given the increasing numbers of infected and dead, 131,890 and 8,549, respectively.
“This ensures that we will continue our war for the next month,” explained the governor, who stressed that, despite the fact that the figures show that the state is on the right track, it cannot be thought that everything has happened.
Despite the fact that Trump has managed to convince a significant number of states to reopen their economies, even though the numbers of the pandemic are not optimistic, he failed to dissolve the crisis team of his government as he had announced yesterday, in a gesture of return to The normality.
“The working group will continue indefinitely, focused on security and reopening our country again. We can add or remove people, as appropriate,” the president announced, after receiving a shower of criticism from the political leadership, the media and social networks.
