Chaotic coronavirus crisis

Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Hannah Kuchler in New York 6 HOURS AGO

... Across the country, governors and mayors are pleading for help from Washington to secure more ventilators and other medical supplies and imploring residents to stay at home to prevent the spread of the virus.

Mr Trump’s response has been to float the idea of reopening the economy by Easter. “You’ll have packed churches all over our country,” he told Fox News on March 24. “It’ll be a beautiful time.”

This is the split-screen crisis that Americans are witnessing — a tussle of facts and narratives that is shaping the way the federal government manages the pandemic, the outlook for the economy and November’s presidential election. On the one hand, there is a relentless flow of grim news as the disease takes hold in America’s cities. “We’re now looking at a bullet train, because the numbers are going up that quickly,” Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York, warned this week.

But the view from the White House is very different. With his eyes firmly fixed on his re-election prospects, Mr Trump has held daily news conferences where he has regularly played down the seriousness of the pandemic ...

https://www.ft.com/content/80aa0b58-7010-11ea-9bca-bf503995cd6f