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Dick Kovacevich, former CEO of Wells Fargo bank, thinks most Americans should return to work in April, urging that we "gradually bring those people back and see what happens".
Lloyd Blankfein, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, whose net worth is $1.1bn, recommends "those with a lower risk of the diseases return to work" within a "very few weeks".
Tom Galisano, founder of Paychex, whose net worth is $2.8bn, believes "the damages of keeping the economy closed could be worse than losing a few more people ... You're picking the better of two evils."
Donald Trump is concerned that a prolonged lockdown might harm his chances of reelection. "We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem," he said last week. On Sunday he backed off his Easter back-to-work deadline, saying social distancing guidelines would remain in place until the end of April.
But senior public health officials including Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, think this may be too soon.
America already leads the world in coronavirus cases. Dr Fauci believes we haven't yet felt the worst of the pandemic.
It may seem logical to weigh the threat to public health against the accumulating losses to the economy, and then at some point decide economic losses outweigh health risks. As Stephen Moore, who is advising the White House, warns: "You can't have a policy that says we're going to save every human life at any cost, no matter how many trillions of dollars you're talking about."
But whose "trillions of dollars" of costs are we talking about?
Workers typically bear the biggest burdens during economic downturns, especially if they lose their jobs and don't have enough money to pay the bills. Eighty percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Late last week, lawmakers made an important step to prevent such hardships. The $2.2 trillion coronavirus bill provides jobless Americans an extra $600 in unemployment benefits per week for four months, and includes contract and gig workers.
The bill was almost scuttled when Republican lawmakers objected that this would boost incomes of some job losers higher than their pay when they worked.
Apparently, these lawmakers hadn't noticed that the pay of the typical working American has stagnated for decades, adjusted for inflation. So a temporary boost in pay in order to get people to stay home and thereby help slow the spread of Covid-19 is hardly unseemly.
Here's what is unseemly. The "economy" that the bankers and billionaires are eager to restart had been growing rapidly before the pandemic. But most of its gains had gone into corporate profits, as shown by the meteoric rise of the stock market until a few weeks ago.
The bankers and billionaires now urging Americans get back to work own a huge share of that stock market. The richest 1 percent of the population owns roughly half of the value of all shares of stock. (The richest 10 percent own more than 80%.)
So when they recommend Americans get back to work for the sake of the "economy," they're really urging that other people risk their lives for the sake of restoring the bankers' and billionaires' stock portfolios.
While it's true that we can't save every human life at any cost, and at some point may have to end the lockdown of America and accept some additional coronavirus casualties, we need to keep in mind which Americans we are talking about.
The trade-off average Americans might make between getting back to work and exposing themselves to the virus is likely to be quite different from the trade-off bankers and billionaires make, especially if average Americans have enough income support to get through the crisis.
Even four months of extra unemployment benefits may not be enough. The richest nation in the world surely has enough resources to keep its people safe at home for as long as it takes.
Just 10 minutes before midnight on Sunday, President Donald Trump fired off a cryptic all-caps tweet that was interpreted as an alarming signal that--despite warnings from health experts--he could soon lift the federal social distancing guidelines issued by the White House last week to help slow the spread of coronavirus.
"We really need to come together as a nation. We really, really need everyone to stay at home."
--Dr. Jerome Adams, U.S. Surgeon General
"WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF," Trump tweeted, suggesting the economic impacts of preventative measures could be more harmful than the further spread of coronavirus. "AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!"
Trump proceeded to retweet a number of approving responses from his supporters, including one Twitter user who said the U.S. should "isolate the high risk groups and [let] the rest of us get back to work before it's all over for everyone."
The president has repeatedly been chastised by experts for making uninformed statements that either mislead the public or undermine public health warnings in regards to the coronavirus pandemic.
During a press briefing earlier Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would release new guidelines Monday that would allow people who were exposed to the coronavirus to return to work if they wear masks.
\u201cThe president is signaling that after 15 days he wants to \u201cisolate the high-risk groups\u201d and tell everyone else to go back to work \u2014 based on a recommendation from a Twitter rando and in direct contravention to public health experts.\u201d— Kyle Cheney (@Kyle Cheney) 1584965338
The 15-day period to which the president referred began last Monday, when Trump issued guidelines (pdf) urging people to listen to state and local authorities, avoid unnecessary travel, and stay at home as much as possible. A number of states, including California and New York, have issued "stay at home" orders and temporarily shuttered non-essential businesses.
Critics warned in response to Trump's tweet that rolling back efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19, which has officially infected more than 33,000 people nationwide, could have catastrophic consequences.
\u201cLET LOOSE THE DOGS OF PLAGUE. \n\nI AM BORED WITH HAVING TO "GOVERN"\u201d— Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org (@Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org) 1584971636
"This is going to get millions of people killed, and a disproportionately large number of them will be his base," tweeted David Klion, news editor at Jewish Currents.
In a Monday morning appearance on NBC's "TODAY," Trump's own U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said "not enough people are taking the virus seriously" and warned that "this week it's going to get bad."
"We really need to come together as a nation," said Adams. "We really, really need everyone to stay at home."
Osita Nwanevu, staff writer at The New Republic, pointed to an Imperial College of London study warning that an insufficient coronavirus mitigation strategy could result in over a million deaths from the disease in the United States alone.
Nwanevu noted that Trump is not the only one suggesting coronavirus containment measures should soon be lifted for the sake of the economy.
Lloyd Blankfein, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, claimed in a tweet Sunday night--sent about two hours before Trump's--that "extreme measures to flatten the virus 'curve'" risk "crushing the economy, jobs, and morale."
"Within a very few weeks let those with a lower risk to the disease return to work," Blankfein said.
Let's be clear about this: Whether they know it or not, these people, based on reputable estimates, are proposing having a million killed. https://t.co/5m5LZFf6D0
-- Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) March 23, 2020
Axiosreported Monday that "at the end of the 15-day period, there will likely be a serious clash between the public health experts--who will almost certainly favor a longer period of nationwide social distancing and quarantining--versus the president and his economic and political aides, who are anxious to restart the economy."
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday said he welcomes "the hatred of the crooks who destroyed our economy" after former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein suggested he might vote for President Donald Trump in November if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination.
"I think I might find it harder to vote for Bernie than for Trump," Blankfein, a life-long Democrat, told the Financial Times in an interview published Friday. "There's a long time between now and then. The Democrats would be working very hard to find someone who is as divisive as Trump. But with Bernie they would have succeeded."
Sanders quickly responded to Blankfein's comments on Twitter:
\u201cI welcome the hatred of the crooks who destroyed our economy.\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1582309788
Blankfein said Sanders' proposed wealth tax on the ultra-rich is "just as subversive of the American character" as Trump's demonization of "groups of people who he has never met."
"I don't like that at all," Blankfein said. "I don't like assassination by categorization. I think it's un-American. I find that destructive and intemperate... At least Trump cares about the economy."
Blankfein, who has an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion, told FT that he is not rich, but "well-to-do."
"I can't even say 'rich,'" said the former banker. "I don't feel that way. I don't behave that way."
The FT interview was not the first time Blankfein has spoken out against Sanders, a longtime critic of Wall Street. Following Sanders' victory in the New Hampshire Democratic primary earlier this month, Blankfein tweeted that the Vermont senator is "just as polarizing as Trump and he'll ruin our economy and doesn't care about our military."
Blankfein's past criticisms of Sanders earned the former banker a spot on the senator's "anti-endorsement list" released last September.
"Lloyd Blankfein became a billionaire after his investment bank received an $824 billion taxpayer bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department, paid over $5.5 billion in fines for mortgage fraud, avoided paying any federal income taxes in 2008, and lectured Congress to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," reads Blankfein's section on Sanders' anti-endorsement page.