Appearing Monday on Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom, White House National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow concurred with President Trump that the federal government should consider less strict social distancing to avoid further economic calamity even if the Chinese coronavirus is not fully eradicated.
A partial transcript is as follows:
ED HENRY: The president tweeted about midnight, “We can’t let the cure be worse than the problem.” He seemed to be talking about in a week or so, maybe making a decision to try to get the economy back open. Governor Cuomo said much of the same. He said, “We’ve got to plan the pivot over, open the valve.” How do you do that?
LARRY KUDLOW: We’re going to have to try to do that. We can’t shut in, the economic cost to individuals is just too great, so let’s just see how this thing plays out. More testing is essential, and we’re loading up with tests now. That’s going to be a big help. But the president is right. The cure can’t be worse than the disease, and we’re going to have to make some difficult trade-offs. I’m not the spokesman. I don’t want to get ahead of the story. I spoke to the president about this subject late last evening, so we’ll be looking at a number of different things. Let’s give it another week.