US faces the great divide on reopening

Return to business generates heated protests, debate

Snuffer's Restaurant & Bar in Dallas, Texas, served its legendary burgers and cheddar fries again last weekend.

Two Rhode Island drive-in movie theaters were scheduled to reopen on Friday, and on Wednesday in the town of Washington, Connecticut, people will be allowed to eat outdoors again at the George Washington Tavern.

In Texas, Rhode Island, Connecticut and more than 30 other states across the United States, the reopening of the country from restrictions put in place to stem the COVID-19 pandemic is underway.

But a hodgepodge of rules that vary by counties and cities within those states－along with a sharp divide among elected officials on when and how to resume business－reflects a "two Americas" reopening.

Polls show a political divide on reopening, with Republicans led by US President Donald Trump, generally favoring opening up quickly, while Democrats support gradual reopenings.

Since March, the pandemic has put more than 300 million people behind doors under differently named directives, such as "stay-at-home","stay safe" and "pause".

The inability of many US citizens to put food on the table, along with economic stagnancy, has spawned resentment and placed pressure on governors across the country to ease restrictions.

As in the rest of the pandemic-stricken world, COVID-19 in the US is a story of loss.

The death toll from the virus in the country has surpassed 81,000, according to the Covid Tracking Project, including at least 28,000 residents and workers at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

Last month, the unemployment rate soared to 14.7 percent－the highest since the Great Depression－having stood at 3.5 percent just two months earlier.

Some 33 million new unemployment claims have been made in the past two months, while business losses total billions of dollars.

More than 100,000 small businesses have shut permanently since the pandemic escalated in March, according to a study by researchers at the University of Illinois, Harvard Business School, Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

In the restaurant industry, 3 percent of operators have gone out of business, according to the National Restaurant Association.

As governors reopen their states and ease restrictions, they face questions of choice and risk, such as how much of public life should be reopened? And most important, will reopening lead to a new wave of the virus and even greater loss?

The answers could determine the health of 328 million people and a $22 trillion economy.

J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice-president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said,"We are in the midst of a very murky and confusing transition here in the United States, as federal guidance has been lifted and many states begin to reopen their economies.

"There remains deep tension between public health safety on the one hand and a desire－understandable desire－to exit the economic crisis and see a reopening of business and schools. The American public remains very uneasy about premature lifting of shelter-in-place."

On Tuesday, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus team, warned about opening too fast.

"There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you might not be able to control, not only leading to some suffering and death, but it could even set you back on the road to economic recovery," he told a US Senate health committee.

Trump has acknowledged that there might be more deaths from COVID-19 during reopening.

"It's possible there will be some, because you won't be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is," he said in a television interview. "But at the same time, we're going to practice social distancing, we're going to be washing hands, we're going to be doing a lot of the things that we've learned to do over the last period of time."