On Tuesday, President Trump made international headlines when he declared his hope that the American economy would broadly reopen by April 12 — Easter Sunday. The stock markets, buoyed as well by positive developments in negotiations for a federal relief package, surged. The projection was no doubt comforting to the millions of American families juggling the sudden cancellation of school with new remote-work obligations or, worse, pink slips.
But many, including the president’s frequent adversaries in the press, expressed skepticism that the physicians and scientists on the White House coronavirus task force agree with this timeline. They pointed to the continued harrowing experiences of countries further along the pandemic curve and to more sobering models and projections from other public-health experts.
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