Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wants Donald Trump to temper his eagerness to reopen the US economy with care for what virus testing says about the public health of US populations.

The economy won’t improve if Americans are not willing to venture from their homes to businesses which are reopening from the lockdown conditions in place for weeks to attempt to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In the United States, there have been nearly 1.2 million reported cases of COVID-19, including 68,279 deaths.

Trump has been eager to see the state stay-at-home orders and lockdown conditions lifted, which have kept much of the US economy shuttered.

Trump’s zeal to reopen the economy has spurred several Republican governors to reopen their states’ economies despite warnings from health professionals. He has also encouraged protesters in Michigan and across the country via Twitter to “liberate” their states from the lockdown conditions.

“My message is health has to come first. And if we’re not extra careful about health, the economy will not improve. That’s another reason testing is so important,” said Schumer (D-NY). “If people are afraid, you can give money to the store owners and say, ‘Open up.’ But if no one will go out on the streets and they don’t have customers, what good is it going to be? So we have to be careful and you have to err on the side of science and of caution. That doesn’t mean you shut down everything all the time.

“I think New York has issued a careful plan, but when the president importunes a thousand protesters, those fringe groups, it seems, most of them, to go protest and say, ‘Open the government regardless of scientific information,’ that will hurt all of us,” Schumer added.

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