Devoid of the notion that the American people should be hopeful for the future, CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront reacted to the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s Opening Up America Again guidelines with condemnation, fear-mongering, and scorn.
Over the course of nearly 20 minutes, CNN's so-called journalists slammed the phases to reopen the country until there’s a vaccine, and even huffed about how President Trump would be to blame for any infections and deaths that would take place when states move into any of the three phases.
Most notably, the CNN hacks expressed the most concern for major cities and states that, put simply, were they all live and work. Americans were struggling with the loss of wealth, mental health struggles, and unemployment, but the reality remained that the elites weren’t facing the same realities as fellow Americans from Alaska to Florida to Maine.
Inside Politics host John King led off by dismissing the significance of states ready for phase one since states with “under 1,000 cases….is three percent of the American population” and thus mean little for the economy.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta offered up some praise as a helpful slate of goals for states, but the praise was few and far between. Both Burnett and Gupta heavily harped on the widespread reports about lack of testing as cause to pooh-pooh the idea of anyone coming out of lockdown.
Predictably, one person who couldn’t contain their Trump hate was sniveling “fact-checker” Daniel Dale, who suggested that things weren’t under control in rural states (in that Trump was “exaggerating” how they’re not overwhelmed) and that the focus about supposed inaction early on should be aimed at Trump.
After Burnett twisted Trump’s words about returning to “normal” and full stadiums meant soon (thus without regard for safety), chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta groused that “Trump wants to be phase three in a phase one world” and it’s “unrealistic” to think many states would and should be in phase one anytime soon.
Acosta seemed like a broken record as he added that Trump “is just not dealing with the reality of the situation.”
Between his first set of comments and later ones, Acosta decried the notion that contact tracing of any kind could take place in flare-ups, implicitly lobbied for life largely staying shut until there’s a vaccine, and blamed Trump (via his guidelines) for any personal turmoil once states move into any phase.
In other words, Acosta sought to convince those of his anti-Trump takes through the fear of death and even an analogy about spilled puzzle pieces (click “expand”):
At one point, Erin, during this press conference, he said, well, there are outbreaks or hot spots that flare up we can go in there and, “whack it.” What does that mean? There isn't a vaccine at this point. There isn't a treatment, a proven treatment at this point for this virus. You can't go into hot spots and just whack it. There will be significant health problems and the potential for outbreaks and things needing to be closed down again, I think there is that potential there. The other thing, Erin, that has not been discussed is what happens if people want to travel from a phase three state to a phase one state and phase one state to phase three state? There are so many different questions that have not been answered in all of this, Erin. There was not enough time given in that press conference to go through some of these questions and, I think, quite honestly, there are going to be a lot of questions asked in the coming days. You have states eager and raring to go to get opened up again and they just may not be ready. They're taking cues from the President. When he talks, Republican governors, Republican lawmakers listen. The question will become, do they open up too quickly and will they have problems as a result of that?
(….)
What are our health experts going to say if the spring breakers are back on the beach in a couple of weeks, not practicing social distancing, doing the opposite of that, which is what you do at spring break? I think we could see hot spots flare up that perhaps could have been avoided had these social distancing guidelines been continued for some period of time….[S]o the President talked about this being a beautiful puzzle during this press conference just a short while ago. I think the President better hope that the puzzle isn't turned upside down and dumped on the floor, because he could a situation here where, you know, he's giving the green light to certain parts of the country because he's concerned about this economy, and everybody is….[T]he question is going to be asked if you start seeing hot spots and flare-ups whether or not he pushed the accelerator too fast and people got sick as a result of that. I think that question is undoubtedly going to be asked if people get sick.
Burnett had partisanship of her own, stating on one hand to Gupta that America doesn’t “have militarized borders” and “we are one country,” rendering outbreaks from a state not recovered to one in recovery, but later praising how the authoritarian government of Singapore was handling the pandemic.
Speaking of Gupta, he grew more negative as the panel went along toward its conclusion (click “expand”):
GUPTA: I think people probably need to understand that no matter what, until there's a vaccine, that every time things are reopened to some extent, there be new infections. We don't know how many, but there will be new infections, likely new hospitalizations, and there may be more deaths as a result of that. That will happen each time you start reopening things. This is a contagious virus. It's still out there. You know, I think --- I think people sort of fundamentally realize that but it's worth reminding and I think it's going to be a balance each time…[T]here's good gated criteria here, which should lower the likelihood that people will get very sick and die from this, but that's likely to happen each time this happens and I think it will cause people to sort of re-evaluate and --- and wonder, was it too early, every single time this happens.
(….)
BURNETT: That's right and if you have a surge in one place it spreads to a whole lot of others and then to even more and Sanjay, I asked that for a simple question. You could say a city like New York is hit the hardest in no small part, right, because of its population density. Once you start to reopen in New York, even if it's only a little bit, you start to see a lot of pressure on, let's just be honest, public transportation and how do --- how do you deal with that? Because if that happens again, it starts to spread more in places like New York, it then spreads in Connecticut, it then spreads in New Jersey, it spreads in Washington, D.C., or Chicago, or any of these places that you have these regular links.
GUPTA: It's the biggest public health challenge in this whole thing. I mean, when we talk about containment, the reason that testing and then contact tracing is so important is because each time somebody tests positive --- I mean, again, these tests have to be done very regularly on everybody. Each time someone tests positive, they need to be isolated. They need to figure out who they've been in contact with, if they've been to a subway or something, it’s very challenging….So, until you have a vaccine, each time you have a cluster like that, not only will it be, you know, spread within those people, but then they all go somewhere and can spread it even more.
