President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, Friday, March 20, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Late Sunday night, President Donald Trump announced that there might be light at the end of the tunnel coming in terms of the action currently being taken to try to prevent the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.

“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself,” the president tweeted last night. “At the end of the 15 day period, we will make a decision as to which way we want to go.”

On March 16, Trump had issued guidance for 15 days, asking people to take collective action to help slow the spread of the virus, to help “flatten the curve.”

From NY Post:

“We’re asking everyone to work at home, if possible, postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people,” Trump had said a press briefing last Tuesday describing some of the guidelines.

“If we do this right, our country — and the world, frankly — but our country can be rolling again pretty quickly,” Trump said.

Many states and businesses had also shut down or limited their actions across the country.

While you want to slow the spread of the virus, you don’t want to, as Trump put it, have the cure be worse. You don’t want to have people lose their jobs or businesses go under, and irreparably harm people’s livelihood in the process. So it’s good to hear that a change may be coming that might provide some relief to those folks who might be in difficult straits.

The 15 day period ends next Tuesday on March 31.

Trump also declared New York, California, and Washington disaster areas on Sunday so that will help get needed federal aid to people affected in those areas.

Congress was also working out a stimulus package to provide relief to Americans. But last night, as we reported, Democrats, who reportedly had agreed to a deal on Saturday with Republicans, blocked the bill from proceeding. Naturally, some media spun it as best they could for the Democrats. But Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Senate majority leader, was livid at Democrats for playing games with the lives of Americans. They are supposed to take another vote today on the bill.

As we have previously reported, while the diagnosed cases have gone up with more testing, the mortality rate against the diagnosed cases has continued to go gone down and is now at 1.3 percent, with 452 deaths out of 34,717. That’s a positive sign looking to the future. As we noted, it’s likely that the true number is actually under 1 percent if you add in those who are basically asymptomatic and/or never get tested. It may be that the government could now shift to more of a South Korea model – testing and tracking, isolating those folks, and/or those at risk, and letting everyone else out with proper cautions. We shall see, but nice to think there might be light coming.