The daunting reality of getting US back to normal
Katty Kay
Presenter, BBC World News
@KattyKayBBCon Twitter
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What will 'normal' look like?
President Trump says "we'll be the comeback kids", but scientists warn easing restrictions won't be quick or easy - the US still lacks the capacity to test and track infections on the scale needed.
Americans are watching anxiously as Europe slowly opens back up from lockdown. There is intense pressure from the White House and business leaders here to get things moving again as soon as possible. But proposals to do so are fragmented and unclear.
There is a general recognition that it may take the US longer to get out of this than other countries, partly because the country is so large and partly because it responded later than other countries. Shutting down late meant the virus had already spread and so it takes longer to get it out of society.
"A late mover is the worst of all worlds," says Tom Bossert, former national security adviser to President Trump.
Mr Bossert helped develop the pandemic response plan that President George W Bush asked for back in 2005. He has been obsessed with the threat of a pandemic like this ever since and raised the alarm to the White House at the end of February, but didn't get much of a hearing.
What can be done before we have a vaccine?
Experts agree the Holy Grail is a vaccine to prevent infection or medical therapies to cure it. "It's over when we have a vaccine," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at his daily press conference on Wednesday. But, he added, that vaccine is 12-18 months away.
In the meantime, US scientists want more data before they will be confident they can reopen the economy without the virus flaring right back up again.
They want to know how many people are infected. They want to know more about whether people who've been infected are then immune and if so for how long.
Dr Peggy Hamburg, who ran the Food and Drug Administration under President Obama, says the idea is that "we can test for antibodies (immunity) and then send people back into the economy." But she warns, "we're not there yet to do that with confidence."
But she says two upcoming studies from Westchester country, New York, and Santa Clara county, California, could provide more information on antibodies and immunity.
How do we build up immunity if staying at home?
The longer the country is shut down the more the economy suffers but also the fewer people are infected. That's good for protecting the health system but health experts point out that there's some conflict because it doesn't allow people to develop immunity in large enough numbers to reach so-called herd immunity.
The former head of the Centers for Disease Control, Tom Frieden, believes that even in the hotspots like New York, only 5-10% of people have been infected. To get herd immunity 60% of the population needs to have been infected.