President Trump has struggled throughout the coronavirus crisis to grasp that the graphs plotting human disease and deaths — in their thousands — are more important than those charting the fluctuations of the stock market and his approval rating. His retreat from a plan to miraculously resurrect the American economy by Easter therefore began a countdown to his next reversion to form.

That came before the holiday arrived. By Good Friday, the administration had floated another plan to phase out protections for public health and lives in a few weeks for the sake of his economic and political bottom lines.

Trump and other administration officials are pushing to resume regular activity by the beginning of May, the Washington Post reported, following public comments by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Attorney General William Barr suggesting as much. Barr called the stay-at-home orders affecting most of the country draconian, adding derisively that officials should not “tell people to go home and hide under their bed.” The president looked forward on Twitter to a return to normalcy “sooner rather than later,” whereupon the virus “must be quickly forgotten.”

The president’s rush to return to a pre-pandemic state persists even though experts within and outside his administration believe such haste could cost tens of thousands of lives. The Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments projected that the virus, which had killed nearly 18,000 Americans and more than 500 Californians as of Friday, could cause 200,000 deaths if shelter orders are lifted after a month, the New York Times reported.

Most experts hesitate to predict when stay-home orders and other social distancing measures will end because that requires conditions that haven’t been met, including a consistent decline in infections. While a few regions have shown signs of reaching a peak in the outbreak, most are still seeing rising numbers. California officials have estimated that the pandemic might not reach its height until the middle of May.

Another unmet condition is a robust capacity to detect and contain new infections. Until a vaccine is developed a year or more hence, successful social distancing will prevent infections and leave more people vulnerable to the virus. That means that once normal activities resume, new outbreaks can be stopped only by widespread testing for the virus, tracing of exposures and quarantining of the infected and exposed.

Trump has been irresponsible not just in setting unrealistic deadlines for reopening the economy but also in refusing to grapple with the hard work of making that crucial goal reachable. His administration in fact considered withdrawing support for testing in recent days and has largely left that and other matters to state and local officials.

Because the president also abdicated to governors and mayors on the social distancing measures he is now chafing at, ending them won’t be entirely up to him either. That is for the best.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.