This week, despite a White House model showing  ending social distancing would result in a spike of 200,000 new cases a  day and deaths of 3,000 a day, the majority of the country started to  reopen. Public health officials warned of dire consequences, with one  likening the premature reopening to genocide, but Trump triumphantly  declared Phase 1 was over, and now the American people would need to be  “warriors” and return to work — a possible death sentence for many of  the vulnerable.

Trump was back out on the campaign trail,  visiting a factory in swing state Arizona, where his campaign music  played in the background, and Trump continued his strange bravado of not  wearing a face mask. Within days, it was discovered that two White  House employees in direct contact with Trump and Vice President Mike  Pence had tested positive, as had 11 members of the Secret Service, yet  Trump continued to flout advice from experts on wearing a mask and  social distancing.

This week, the country lost 3.2 million  additional jobs, and the April unemployment rate came in at 14.7%, the  highest since the Great Depression. It became clear this week, as Trump  said the White House coronavirus task force would be shuttered, and then  under pressure, instead reconfigured its purpose to planning the  reopening, that indeed, Trump and the federal government did not  actually have a plan of what to do, or have interest in developing one.  Instead, Trump was willing the roll the dice with American lives in  hopes of reopening in time to spur the economy ahead of the November  election. As one op-ed writer noted, while numerous countries with mass  testing and contract tracing were returning to normal, Trump had  essentially quit.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-182/