Trump says he won't close US if there's second coronavirus wave despite health risk

President said that the government would only need to worry about ‘embers and flames’

On a visit to a Ford manufacturing plant in Michigan, Donald Trump expressed confidence that the US will not need to implement social distancing measures again this year – even if the coronavirus poses a renewed threat in the fall and winter.

Asked if he was concerned about a potential second wave, Mr Trump answered that localised outbreaks would be easy enough to handle, and that a shutdown comparable to the one currently underway would not be necessary to keep Americans safe.

“People say that’s a very distinct possibility,” the president answered, “it’s standard, and we’re gonna put out the fires. We’re not gonna close the country, we’re gonna put out the fires. Whether it’s an ember or a flame, we’re gonna put it out. But we’re not closing our country.”

Mr Trump has several times repeated his belief that the pandemic will dwindle into small, localised outbreaks, allowing the US to handle them without locking down. He invokes it to dismiss worries that a second wave could prove as bad or worse than the first, as has been predicted by various experts – including White House adviser Dr Anthony Fauci.

Dr Fauci warned last month that the US and the wider northern hemisphere could be in for “a bad fall and a bad winter” if measures to control the virus are not put in place.

Mr Trump, on the other hand, declines to entertain the idea that an autumn resurgence is a serious threat, at least in public. At another point in the Ford visit, he again used the vocabulary of fire, to dismiss the risk.

“So if we were at 100,000 – instead of 100,000, multiply that times 15, 20 or 25, it wouldn’t have been acceptable. It wouldn’t have been sustainable! You couldn’t have done it!

“So we’ve called it right, and now I want it open. And we’re gonna open. And if there’s a fire, an ember, a flame someplace we put it out.”

Whether 100,000 deaths counts as “acceptable” is debatable, not least since recent data from Columbia University indicates that the administration could have saved 36,000 lives had it acted earlier. Mr Trump called that study a “political hit job”.

Mr Trump has repeatedly said that his government should be credited for keeping deaths from surging into the millions, though estimates saying the toll could have reached such heights refer to hypothetical situations where the government did nothing at all.