April, wrote a poet, is the cruelest month.
So it was in New York City and America as we weathered a viral storm and its concomitant carnage.
As the calendar turns to May, some cruelty appears to be abating. But death could rush back with a vengeance if the nation, understandably eager to nurse its economic wounds, forgets lessons just agonizingly absorbed.
A month ago, 4,780 Americans had lost their lives to COVID-19. As of early Monday afternoon, the nation topped 69,000 fatalities.
The coronavirus has fallen far past its peak in its epicenter of New York, but nationwide, during the past five days, U.S. deaths averaged about 2,000.
If relaxing social distancing restrictions gives the virus new life, such a daily drumbeat of death could be drawn out.
Thirty-one states began to reopen in some degree this weekend. We pray their economies revive without enabling this plague’s resurgence. We pray that these states shine a light that New York and New Jersey, hardest hit of all, can follow.
Still, what the dense metropolis needs most now, what it still lacks, is a testing infrastructure to identify and isolate the sick.
President Donald Trump, the only one who can marshal the federal government to help build it, has constantly moved goalposts. He has taken credit for lives saved by social distancing in one breath while agitating to end restrictions in the next.
If the president is right that shutdowns for which he now claims credit saved thousands of lives, will he accept that ending them could have the opposite effect?
— New York Daily News
