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Posted: 2020-04-17 02:53:49

Posted April 17, 2020 11:04:24

In a week when 2,500 Americans are dying every day from COVID-19, US President Donald Trump has launched his plan for ending the nationwide lockdowns.

The branding king has also given the strategy a catchy title with familiar cadence: Opening Up America Again.

"We'll be the comeback kids, all of us," Trump said this week.

Right now, the number of daily deaths is horrific.

But, looking at the data, the US President may be right about America being "past the peak" of new coronavirus cases.

Nationwide, the number of new infections and intensive care admissions is declining.

The number of daily deaths has flattened, albeit at a devastating level.

For now, there are enough ventilators to go around, frontline health workers are getting more access to protective equipment and the temporary hospitals set up in COVID-19 hotspots are nowhere near capacity.

The frenzied early days of this rolling calamity have morphed into a grimly calm rhythm of morbidity.

Now a new, more hopeful phase is beginning and the President is doing everything possible to put himself at the centre of it.

He's promising "new heights of greatness and glory" for America.

A more cautious approach to opening the economy

At first glance, the cautious, data-driven approach to opening up the economy makes sense.

It's a far cry from what Mr Trump was proposing a few weeks ago when he spoke of "packed churches" on Easter.

It's a three-phase plan, to be carried out on a "community-by-community, city-by-city, state-by-state" basis.

If a region can show the number of infections have been declining for 14 days and its healthcare facilities are running smoothly, it can move on to the next phase.

If infections rise, restrictions are put in place again.

Stay up-to-date on the coronavirus outbreak

Trump reportedly suggested some states, like Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota, could move to phase one "literally tomorrow because they've met all the guidelines".

The continued rapid expansion of testing, which remains inadequate in many hotspots, will be crucial to the success of the strategy.

Importantly, the onus will be on individual governors to make the decisions that best suit their populations, with coordination and guidance from the Federal Government.

If only such care and competence was available at the front end of the crisis, when governors of the worst-affected states had to make the tough decisions on their own while the Commander-in-Chief played down the risk.

Trump's approval climbed as he amped up restrictions

A month ago today, Trump released his strict guidelines for slowing the spread of COVID-19.

By then, states like New York, California and Washington had already taken matters into their own hands.

Still, in the days after his announcement, Trump's approval ratings got a noticeable bump.

FiveThirtyEight's average of polls showed support for Trump rising from around 42 per cent in mid-March to 46 per cent in early April.

It's normal for voters the world over to rally around their leader in times of crisis.

In the past month, presidents and prime ministers globally — including Scott Morrison — have seen a surge in support.

During first Gulf War, George HW Bush's approval rating soared 30 points to 89 per cent.

Approval for his son, George W Bush, rocketed 40 points to 90 per cent in the days after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

In historical context, Trump's four-point bump was nothing to sing about.

But even those small gains have since evaporated.

RealClearPolitics shows approval of Trump's handling of the crisis rising steeply through March, then falling just as fast since the start of April.

He tried to shift the narrative by attacking the media

This week, the Commander-in-Chief started to look like a man under pressure, responding in the best way he knows how: by picking fights.

At least when it comes to the blame-game, Mr Trump is ahead of the curve.

On Monday, he ramped up his attack on the "fake news" media, using his daily crisis briefing from the White House to play a campaign style video to the millions who tuned in at home for the latest coronavirus information.

Highly selective, it featured clips of journalists who "minimised the risks" contrasting against a timeline of the President's most decisive moments and complete with an inspiring sound track.

But Mr Trump's own timeline featured just one entry for the entire crucial month of February.

By the White House's own measure, the only action taken in that month was on February 6: "CDC ships first testing kits".

Even to this day, the US continues to have major shortages of testing kits.

As the video played on, CNN and MSNBC cut away from the press conference.

Your questions on coronavirus answered:

When CNN returned, its headline chyron, at the bottom of the screen read "Angry Trump turns briefing into propaganda session".

If Trump was looking for a distraction from the rising death toll, he got it.

Then he picked a fight with the WHO

On Tuesday (local time), the President opened fire on the World Health Organisation (WHO).

He accused the United Nations body of "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus" and promised to halt its funding while an investigation was conducted.

The WHO hasn't covered itself in glory since the first signs of a possible pandemic.

In mid-January, it publicly supported China's claims that human-to-human transmission had not been proven.

Even now, the WHO remains unopposed to the reopening of China's so-called wet markets, where the coronavirus is thought to have originated.

But if the WHO is to blame for America's coronavirus woes, why does every other country on earth seem to be doing so much better than the US?

After all, every country made its own decisions based on the same information from the WHO.

What the experts are saying about coronavirus:

US governors also in Trump's sights

The President spent the better part of the week taunting state governors, claiming the Federal Government had "absolute power" to force them to lift social-distancing restrictions.

"When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total," he told reporters in the West Wing on Monday.

By Thursday, he had reverted to his original position, that it was up to the governors to decide what sort of social-distancing restrictions were right for their states.

But for the better part of four days, Trump projected an image of a president fighting for ownership of the politically rewarding task of reopening the economy.

His name will even be printed on the bailout cheques being sent to millions of Americans, the first time a president's name has appeared on an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) disbursement.

It's quite a turnaround from four weeks ago when he said: "I don't take responsibility at all."

What you need to know about coronavirus:

Topics: donald-trump, infectious-diseases-other, diseases-and-disorders, covid-19, world-politics, government-and-politics, us-elections, united-states

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