President Donald Trump believes it is time for the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic to focus on reopening the economy, not containing the virus. On Tuesday, Trump confirmed his intention to shut down the White House Coronavirus Task Force and replace it with an advisory body focused on the economy.
Art Caplan, a bioethicist and the director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said that Trump’s disbanding of the task force is emblematic of the president’s broader shift from public health towards economics. Against the advice of prominent members of the task force,, like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, Trump has called for states to lift social distancing restrictions, and has expressed support for protests against various states’ stay-at-home orders.
“What we’re seeing...is the abandonment of the contain the virus strategy,” Caplan said during an interview with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday. “Trump has been arguing for some time that we’ve got to get the economy going. That [shutdowns are] causing more harm, if you will, than the COVID virus in terms of death and disability, and he’s just opening up the floodgates.”
Caplan said he believes Trump will rely less on the advice of medical and public health experts as he pushes to reopen large sectors of the economy in the future.
“I don’t think we’ll see Birx or Fauci after Memorial Day. I really don’t ... they’re not going to be the faces of the reopening,” Caplan said. “To me, this isn’t ‘silence your critics; it’s ‘I don’t care about the health argument anymore.’”
Caplan is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Chair, and director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
