Trump Shifts Tone on Virus, Warning Americans: ‘It’s Bad’
Trump warned that the coronavirus outbreak could last months and drive the U.S. into an economic recession.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump markedly shifted his tone on the coronavirus outbreak, warning Monday that it could last months and drive the U.S. into an economic recession after he had repeatedly minimized the impact.
In a remarkable pivot, Trump advised Americans against gathering in groups of more than 10 people and said they should stop eating out at restaurants and going to bars. Children should be educated at home to the extent possible, he said. The U.S. may still be fighting the outbreak until August or later, he said.
“Someday soon, hopefully, it will end and we’ll be back to where it was,” Trump said, but he acknowledged: “It’s bad. It’s bad. We’re going to hopefully be a best case and not a worst case.”
There have been more than 4,000 cases of the virus in the U.S. and 71 deaths from the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University. On Monday, the benchmark S&P 500 stock market index fell nearly 12%, the most since 1987, and Trump acknowledged that the U.S. economy may enter a recession.
“We have an invisible enemy, we have a problem that a month ago nobody ever thought about,” Trump said. “I’ve seen all of the different problems similar to this that we’ve had -- this is a bad one, this is a very bad one, this is bad in the sense that it’s so contagious, it’s just so contagious, sort of record-setting type contagion.”
But despite the mounting number of U.S. cases, continuing delays in testing large numbers of potentially infected Americans and ominous signs of a stalling economy, Trump said he would give the government a 10 on a 10-point scale for its response to the virus.
“I think we’ve done a great job,” he said. “I would rate ourselves, and the professionals -- I think the professionals have done a fantastic job.”
Besides a two-word tweet on Saturday -- “SOCIAL DISTANCING!” -- Trump’s news conference on Monday was the first time he had publicly endorsed behaviors that many Americans and their employers have already adopted. Additionally, several state and local leaders including the mayor of the U.S. capital, Muriel Bowser, had ordered schools closed and restaurants to limit service before Trump’s remarks.
Just Sunday, Trump had encouraged Americans to buy fewer groceries after runs on stores and told them: “Take it easy. Just relax.”
On Monday, Trump said that Americans should make “sacrifices now” in order to “defeat the virus.”
“We’ll have a big celebration all together,” he said, once the outbreak has subsided.
--With assistance from Justin Sink.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu
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