Pundits and public health experts alike are reeling at President Donald Trump’s pledge to get “the country opened up and rarin’ to go by Easter,” whatever the risks of coronavirus may be.
With Easter less than three weeks away, the president has diverged from the advice of public health authorities worldwide, tweeting on March 24 that:
“Our people want to return to work. They will practice Social Distancing and all else, and Seniors will be watched over protectively & lovingly. We can do two things together. THE CURE CANNOT BE WORSE (by far) THAN THE PROBLEM! Congress MUST ACT NOW. We will come back strong!”
While many have responded with shock and concern at what appears to be the president privileging economic health over public health, Ethereum co-founder and founder of Cardano Charles Hoskinson is not taking Trump’s commitments at face value. In a tweet posted on March 24, he wrote:
“Here is my prediction. I could be totally wrong but I think Trump is actually going to shut down the country with a full quarantine at the end of his 15 day guidelines next week. The speculation about reopening is to prevent people from panicking or relocating.”
Hoskinson’s forecast that America is en route to a full-on lockdown was met with some skepticism in the crypto community.
One pointed to the president’s own vested interests to get the economy back up and running as soon as possible, while another said Hoskinson was crediting Trump with too much ingenuity.
Former Democratic presidential hopeful and cryptocurrency advocate Andrew Yang tweeted his own view on March 24:
“You know what will revive the economy? Suppressing and containing the virus. That’s it.”
Earlier today, Binance CEO Chanpeng Zhang argued that the COVID-19 outbreak was likely to set a new bar for the cryptocurrency markets.
The trillions involved in the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented stimulus package, he claimed, have made a $2 trillion Bitcoin (BTC) market cap with 1 BTC at $100,000 “no longer such a hard to imagine number.”