President Trump's plan to reopen America's economy.

President Donald Trump. 

President Donald Trump has unveiled a plan that will open up the economy of the United States in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak. ABC News. The plan will be in three phases and it will be up to individual governors to implement them. Phase one will be implemented when benchmarks are met, including 14 days of decreasing infections, enough hospital space to deal with patients and a robust testing program for healthcare workers. Phase one will allow some businesses to open up but only if they protect vulnerable employees and keep up sanitation and social distancing. Phase two would allow business travel and would allow schools, camps and bars to open, with diminished capacity for the bars. Phase three would allow businesses to fully reopen and would let people visit hospitals and senior care facilities again. 

You can read the full 16 page document below:

Reopening Guidelines by ABC News Politics on Scribd

My Comment:
Not a whole lot to say about this plan as it was pretty much what I expected. We were obviously not going to have a transfer between a full lockdown and a full release. A phased approach is the right move and it's one that makes a lot of sense.

There are of course complications. It might be awhile before we get the widespread testing this plan requires. Antibody tests are just starting to become available and even regular tests are still being rationed. We are getting better in terms of testing but it still might be awhile before we can test all healthcare workers.

Another problem is the Governors. To be quite frank, I don't trust all of them to do the right thing. A few of the Democratic Governors are probably willing to keep their state shut down for months past the end of the outbreak just to spite President Trump. Most of them are fine, even the Democrats, but I could see someone like Governor Gretchen Whitmer acting out of spite.

Still, it's very good that we have some benchmarks for when this crisis will end. A lot of people are sick and tired of this lockdown and need to have some idea of when it will end. With this new plan at least people can kind of know what to expect, even if it's not a set date.

It sounds like bars are going to be the biggest losers from this order. They won't even be able to open until phase two and only then in a limited fashion. And that's assuming people will even want to come in, people will still be afraid of the virus. I could see a lot of bars going out of business.

That being said though, phase one should massively help a lot of other companies. Many of them are close to going under and having a plan in place will help them possibly weather the storm. They should be able to get short term loans and once we reach phase one they can finally open again and a lot of people can get back to work.