Trump admin shelved CDC guide to reopening states: AP

AP is reporting the White House buried detailed CDC guidelines on reopening the U.S. amid the coronavirus pandemic. Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers joins Zack Guzman to discuss.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: We've been covering the way that states have been planning to reopen their economy as more than a half now institute plans to do that. And when we look at it, it's interesting to see how much leeway local officials now have as the federal government takes a step back and lets state governors and other officials take the lead.

And also interesting to note that the CDC has not necessarily been so active on the front of issuing guidelines. The AP issuing an interesting new report today showing that the White House shelved plans of publishing a report at the CDC in response to plans being instituted in terms of what should be watched in reopening economies across the country.

And I want to get to Kristin Myers, who has more on the interesting battle going on there. Kristin?

KRISTIN MYERS: Hey, Zack. So yeah, as you mentioned, the CDC has been taking a little bit of a backstage, kind of not being out in front of the-- in the spotlight, so to speak, in terms of issuing guidance and also guidelines not just for states, but also for businesses that might want to transition into reopening.

I've actually read through some of their guidelines, which the White House decided to shelve, and it offers very specific guidance and instructions to places like schools or daycares or restaurants, even places of worship-- be it a church or a mosque or a synagogue, et cetera-- on how they can reopen very safely. Offers very specific guidance, for example, in restaurants that tables need to be, for example, more than 6 feet apart from each other, utilizing technology or apps. Things like that to really kind of limit person-to-person contact in any human contact that people need to have with each other-- trying to limit that exposure as much as possible.

The White House instead has decided to shelve those guidelines and offered some vague guidelines of their own, which I'll get to in just a moment, and is really leaning really heavily on states themselves to offer guidance to their own businesses on how they want to reopen, on how they want to transition, and even making the decision about whether they are safe to reopen at all. As you mentioned, more than half of the states in the United States now have decided to reopen and cre-- and do some sort of partial reopening.

Now what's interesting about that is that these states are reopening even against the guidelines-- the vague guidelines, I should say-- offered by the White House. I kind of want to just run through very quickly what those guidelines are for reopening the state that the White House offered. This is on their site. So when we are looking at symptoms, you are supposed to be seeing a downward trajectory of flu-like illnesses reported within a 14 day period-- excuse me-- and also a downward trajectory of COVID-like syndromic cases reported within a two-week span.

Now when it comes to those positive cases of coronavirus, the White House says that a state needs to see a downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period or a downward trajectory of positive tests as a percent of total tests in a 14-day period. So that references whether some states, of course, are starting to test more and more people. Some of those states are starting to flat line. But we're not trying to see a decrease of testing, which we are seeing in some states, Zack.

Now when it comes to hospitals, the hospitals are supposed to be able to treat all patients without crisis care and robust testing program in place for at-risk health care workers including emerging antibody testing. Now as I said earlier, a lot of states are just failing to meet those guidelines. I want to mention here that those guidelines, they're not binding. They're not at all legally binding. States are allowed to decide on their own whether they are meeting that criteria or if they want to completely push that criteria to the side and reopen anyway.

If you're looking at states-- and we have a map here that you guys can see of the states that are partially reopening or open already or will be opening soon-- you've got states like Texas, Alabama, Georgia-- we've talked about that-- Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri-- which I know we'll be talking about in just a moment-- that are choosing to reopen. And yet, when you look at their curve, it's not flattening. Some of them are starting to see more cases this week than they did last week or the week before.

So that downward trajectory of cases does not seem to be holding much water in some of those states, to the point that the World Health Organization is now saying that, frankly, some countries might need to go into lockdown again because of the social distancing rules that have been in place, we're not transitioning out of those states of lockdown. Those stay-at-home orders-- we're not transitioning out of those in a careful enough manner to make sure that we can continue to see these cases on a decline.

And interestingly enough-- and we have been talking about it a little bit earlier-- when you look at that map, there does seem to be a slight partisan divide in how some of these states are handling this. So we don't need to run through it broadly. I know we have to wrap here, but I just want to say, very generally, Republicans more than Democrats, one, seem to be taking less precautions to spread the virus and, two, view a lot of activities like flying or going to a restaurant or a bar as far more safe to do than their Democratic counterparts.