President Donald Trump appears to have made his choice in the awful dilemma posed by the coronavirus pandemic -- whether to destroy the nation's economic foundation in order to save lives.
In his zeal to fire up American prosperity after helping to trigger an unprecedented self-inflicted economic meltdown, Trump is already losing patience -- weeks before the virus may peak.
"Our country was not built to be shut down," the President warned on Monday. "We are going to be opening up our country for business because our country was meant to be open."
"We are going to get it all going again very soon," he said, without setting a timeline -- though he previously called for rethinking the White House's guidance on social distancing next week.
His comments came on day when the number of confirmed cases soared past 40,000 and 100 people died in a single day for the first time. Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of Trump's coronavirus task force, warned that the "attack rate" of the disease in New York, America's dominant economic and financial powerhouse, was five times that of elsewhere.
The President admitted Monday that "certainly, this is going to be bad," on the deadliest day in America's struggle with the pandemic, but he argued that "if it were up to the doctors, they may say let's keep it shut down -- let's shut down the entire world."
But in a powerful briefing on Tuesday, New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has said that at the right time there will be a need to slowly reopen commercial activity, warned: "We are not going to put a dollar figure on human lives."
"No American is going to say 'accelerate the economy at the cost of human life,' " Cuomo said.
Trump's change of emphasis previewed a building confrontation inside his own administration -- between public health officials using the science of epidemiology to battle Covid-19 and political and economic officials desperate to save an economy that is fundamental to basic life and Trump's reelection hopes.
CNN's Kevin Liptak reported Tuesday that the administration was working on a handful of options to present to Trump to provide for some careful opening of the economy in a way that would not compromise efforts to halt the spread of the virus. Some of the plans being drafted are based on geography or on allowing younger people, who are less prone to critical complications, to return to work.
But the President is likely to face warnings that attempts to reverse a shutdown to alleviate a horrific unemployment picture that has devastated the economy are premature at a moment when the pandemic is still exploding.
The President's upbeat prediction of a return to full speed ahead directly contradicted the actions of state governors nationwide -- who are imposing stay-at-home orders, closing businesses and ordering schools out for summer in March.
Local and public health authorities fear the highly contagious virus will cause a tsunami of critically ill patients that will swamp hospitals and mean people will die in the thousands.
The idea that the situation will stabilize in a few weeks -- when most experts say that much, much worse is to come -- appears fanciful. This raises the question of whether Trump is willing to take a decision that could indirectly cause many deaths but that could save millions of other Americans from the deprivations brought on by economic blight.
The President's insistence Monday that "we can do two things at once," may indeed be the eventual prescription for a slow return to normal life. But the reason why the economy is shuttered is that governments have concluded that it is not possible to do two things at once -- keep the curve of infections manageable and open up the economy -- right now.
The most visible and trusted member of the President's task force -- top infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci -- was not at Trump's side when he vowed to open the country up at his daily briefing, instead participating in meetings to attack the pandemic. But the President insisted he would listen to Fauci's counsel, as well as others within the White House.
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