THE United States Congress enacted last Friday, March 27, a historic $2-trillion stimulus bill to help the country – its workers, small businesses, and industries – fight the devastating coronavirus pandemic. It will provide direct financial assistance to Americans, billions of dollars in aid to hospitals as well as to state and local governments, and a fund for distressed industries. President Trump immediately signed it into law.
Even before Congress approved the stimulus bill, President Trump had said he wanted to get the national economy moving again. He said he wanted the American economy “opened up and raring to go by Easter,” about two weeks away.
His optimism was immediately countered by other officials who are now grappling with the coronavirus pandemic spreading in the US and elsewhere around the world. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York State, said to be the worst-hit state in the union, said, ”This is no short-term situation. This is not a long weekend. This is not a week.” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, another state hit badly by the epidemic, said his state’s measures to fight the epidemic will take as many as two to three months.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said the epidemic is expected to pose a serious danger for several weeks. He called President Trump’s Easter optimism an “aspirational projection.”
We are greatly concerned with whatever decision will finally be made on the coronavirus epidemic in the US, because we have today some 5 million Filipinos in the US today. Many of them are doctors and nurses and they are now among the frontliners in the fight against the virus in US hospitals. Many of these hospitals have already reported that the ir facilities and their personnel have been overwhelmed by the deluge of coronavirus patients.
President Trump is evidently hopeful that the $2-trillion stimulus bill approved by Congress will turn the tide against the ongoing epidemic, but no health or local state officials have come forward to share his view. One official said that If Trump pushes more actively for an early economic restart, it could backfire, leading to a deeper health crisis that will cause states to clamp down even harder than they already have.
We all look forward to recovery from the epidemic and the US with its massive $2-trilion stimulus program is in a position to lead an economic recovery. But first it has to stop the epidemic itself in the frontline, the hospitals, where the nation’s doctors and nurses are leading the war.
