A week ago, I was convinced that President Trump knew the perils of shutting down the economy to enable a specious and the dubious public health mandate to arrest CCP COVID-19.

Now I'm not sure.

He has been taken hostage by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who wonders why there isn't a 50-state stay-at-home lockdown, who says assaying the immune population is a secondary concern, and insists that the economic lockdown can only be lifted once there are no new cases and no new deaths.

Dr. Fauci's Rx — more aptly ransom demand — is an economic nuclear winter.  Thanks a lot.  How about a spoonful of hemlock to leave no doubts?

And now Dr. Deborah Birx continues to project deaths of 100,000 to 200,000 while she admits that she is missing 50% of the underlying baseline data, and she cheerleads the march to the gallows.

The apocalyptic public health forecasts are the centerpiece of President Trump's daily briefings.  Yet since Trump boldly exclaimed around March 23 an aspirational goal of reopening America by Easter, he has succumbed to the nuclear winter Rx.  He has been silenced in warning us about the full scale of the economic catastrophe unfolding.  Instead, he squeezes in a happy talk coda about a glorious recovery, with no plan in sight or conviction to get there.

And now, Sean Davis of the Federalist examined the IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) coronavirus model and rightfully called it "garbage."

Would it surprise you that Dr. Fauci also now says he has no idea whether any of the models is any good?

The Hill reported that "according to the Post, several White House staffers have doubted the accuracy of the figures.  One source said Fauci told others there were too many factors at play to come up with an accurate estimate.

"I've looked at all the models. I've spent a lot of time on the models. They don't tell you anything. You can't really rely upon models," he said to members of the task force, according to the Post.

Meanwhile, jobless claims in the last three weeks climbed from hundreds of thousands to over three million and now to nearly seven million.  By Easter, that number may reach 20 million.  Gruesome but not surprising.

Goldman Sachs, not alone among economists, says second-quarter GDP may retreat by 35% , a seven-trillion-dollar pullback, with 15% unemployment.  At the same time, G.S. glibly asserts that the third quarter will rebound by 19%.

How will a rebound happen when the medical chiefs have sedated and led Trump to the abyss of prolonged economic nuclear winter, with no end in sight?

On April 1, Rush Limbaugh devoted nearly half of his radio show to a monologue frequently quoting from Ben Domenech's Federalist piece: "We're Following  a One Size Fits All Coronavirus Strategy Right into a Great Depression."

"We face an unprecedented situation — not a global pandemic, we've seen those before, but a modern capitalist economy that turned itself off for potentially more than 60 days, on purpose.

Uncertainty crushes hope. So the question on the minds of our leaders should be: how do we give citizens more confidence that we can, and will, turn the economy back on?

Rush elaborated on Domenech's warnings, correctly insisting that Americans, indeed most people across the globe, can bear hardships and deprivation.  They cannot exist without hope and will suffer mightily from a prolonged unknown with no options.

The political class has convinced us that the Chinese COVID-19 virus is the dreaded apocalypse, with no regard for the economic fallout in trying to avoid it.  The same political class has seized a governing mandate window to impose a pathway believed to deflate if not redirect the apocalypse, sparing all but several hundred thousand from a COVID-19 death.

But consequences from the economic lockdown to reduce the malignant shape of the pandemic are nastier and more brutal.  Few want to talk about it, because the economic magnitude is unspeakably horrifying, not to mention a political class so smug and self-assured in pulling the deep freeze lever, having no clue how long the freeze should last — and possessing even less ability to engineer an economic resuscitation.

A famous anesthesiologist remarked, "Any doctor can put you to sleep, but only an anesthesiologist can wake you up."

Trump has a gaggle of doctors who know how to put the patient asleep; apparently, they have sedated Trump, while plunging the nation into a dark coma.

Where are the anesthesiologists?  Can anyone bring Trump out of his Ambien sleepwalk?  He needs to snap out of it and return to his instincts on display a week ago.