In her weekly video update, Apple’s retail chief Deirdre O’Brien told staff that she expects the company to reopen “many more” of its retail stores in May after closing all locations outside of China in March due to COVID-19.
In a message to employees at the start of April, O’Brien explained:
…We anticipate that flexible work arrangements will remain in place for all offices, and all Retail stores will remain closed, until early May. We are continuing to monitor local conditions for every Apple facility on a daily basis, and we will make our reopening decisions on the basis of thorough, thoughtful reviews and the latest guidance from local governments and public health experts.
She didn’t specify which stores or regions, but said “we are continuing to analyze this health situation in every location, and I do expect we will reopen up many more stores in May.”
It’s unclear which regions Apple would reopen in first, but O’Brien previously told employees that she expected at least some locations in the U.S. to resume operations in early May. Apple has stores spanning Europe, North America, Asia and big markets like Brazil, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.
Some parts of the U.S. are beginning to get back to work, with states including Texas planning to lift or relax restrictions soon. Georgia has already allowed several businesses to start up again.
MacDailyNews Take: It will be good to see Apple Retail Stores safely reopen soon!
Certainly this is good news for Apple, customers and the coming rebirth of a previous record economy during the Trump administration… 👍🏻🇺🇸🦅
How dare Apple open their stores and endanger the public! The employees… the crowds… the lack of social distancing. We will lose all of the gains made in the last six weeks. What a nightmare! Apple should wait until the Trump gets his act together with testing. Apple should be able to test each employee and customer before they even enter a store – this is a very practical and common sense idea that would save lives. Of course, it might take a few months to a year or two to ramp up testing to a safe level, but we must save lives! Biden / Reade 2020!
Who says they are not following appropriate crowd control and social distancing…this is is a classic American problem. The left attacks anything on the right. And the right attacks anything on the left without knowing any details…
DicDoc, thank you for your comment. You are right – I don’t know what crowd control and (or) social distancing measures will be implemented and how they will be enforced. You are correct. By the way, I meant my post to be sarcastic… hence my comment about it taking a year or TWO for testing to ramp up to an acceptable level and my reference to Ms. Reade being Biden’s possible choice for his VP. Thanks for your post!
I agree completely, GeoB, that it will be great to resume the bull market that began in March 2009 and was interrupted by America’s poor handling of the pandemic.
Snide, selective praise with an asterisk — would I expect less from a not to clever COVERT SMUG LIBERAL? 🤣
The bull market barely limped along from 2008-2015, NO magic wand INDEED, went down as the slowest recovery after a Great Recession in history.
From 2016 until March 2020 the greatest record breaking economy of ALL TIME from a first time non-politician business president — no magic wand required — in the history books.
Won’t find the facts on CNN or in the New York Times because they are an extension of the Democrat Party. You have to tune in to FOX News for media TRUTH these days.
That said, glad you agree in part… 👍🏻🇺🇸🦅
Poor handling? Which part are you referring to?
Trump’s travel ban that protected the west coast from an influx of possibly infected passengers from that country?
Nancy’s delays in the House?
Trump relaxing FDA restrictions and cutting of red tape?
Some individual States that were unprepared?
Most Covid-19 testing in the world?
Korea 11 per 100,000.
USA 17 per 100,000.
Over 40 per 100,000 in some urban areas.
Trump has an excess of ventilators – so many that the US is sending ventilators to allies (France, Spain, Italy). Even Nigeria is getting our extra ventilators. EXTRA!
The relatively low number of deaths in the US. It is not in the millions as originally thought. It is less than half of even the revised numbers 200,000-400,000.
Maybe it is Trump’s fault that the two Navy hospital ships were unneeded. He ordered FEMA to build temporary hospitals all around the country. Is it Trump’s fault many (most?) of them are now unneeded? Is that poor handling?
Look at the situation now compared to what was expected one, two, three months ago. How bad off is the United States? Where are the millions of dead? Where are they? Yes, I know that millions are out of work and there are problems, but Trump cannot make decisions about when to return to work – that isn’t a Federal decision. Each State (sometimes down to the country level) has their own unique situation. You want things to get back to normal? Call your governor. Or you can just stay locked away at home as some in this country would have you do. Follow them, if you like. Be thankful that you have the freedom in the United States to shut yourself away at home or return to work. It is your choice.
So, back to your original concern… how, exactly, is/ was the pandemic poorly handled?
I did not point a finger at President Trump. There is plenty of blame to go around. Somebody should have blown a whistle when the pandemic action plans developed over the last twenty years were discarded and the offices meant to implement them were dismantled. The people who were managing the Strategic National Stockpile in the past two administrations should have realized that it was depleted and restocked it. Instead, there were no substantial deliveries before April 2020. The development of tests, treatments, and vaccines was not pursued with any urgency before mid-March.
When it became obvious to the intelligence community that their warnings of the developing crisis from November on were being ignored, they could have taken stronger action. Likewise for the CDC employees who were embedded with the WHO teams in China and were reporting regularly to Atlanta. They should have squawked when their warnings were ignored.
Ditto for the presidential advisors who have allowed (and are still allowing) their boss to minimize the threat while overselling a series of unproven miracle cures, and could not convince him that a “ban” on travel from China that let 10,000 people in could not be effective, an error repeated in the delayed “ban” against Europe. (To be fair, the political climate in late 2019 and early 2020 did not encourage such protests.)
State and local officials, including but not limited to the public health authorities, should have had better plans and activated them sooner. Private employers (other than Apple) should have instituted office closures earlier, and should have implemented sick leave and healthcare policies that discouraged sick employees from coming to work.
The individuals who insisted on gathering in their thousands for Spring Break, Mardi Gras, concerts, and sports events, even after the threat was apparent, share the blame. They public also has the ultimate responsibility for prioritizing low taxes over sound public policies. We have underfunded public health and created an employer-funded private insurance model that does not even cover all workers… much less those who have been laid off.
The President is hardly blameless, but he wasn’t the only one to do things that appear–in retrospect–to be incredibly foolish.
If you need permission from the State to exercise your freedoms, you aren’t really free are you? If you are waiting for someone to tell you when you can use your rights, they are not rights.
On election day, no one will care about China starting the virus, or irrelevant testing nonsense, because much like the weather, those are things we can’t do anything about. The Governors are the ones who involuntarily forced millions of us into poverty and that is something we can do something about.
Florida Gov DeSantis fought to prevent hospitals from returning COVID patients to nursing homes. NY Gov Cuomo made returning the infected from hospitals to nursing homes full of the most vulnerable and uninfected people mandatory, even while thousands of Trump/Fed built beds sat unused. The predictable result is that NY nursing home deaths are well over 20 times higher than Florida’s. Bad policy killed tens of thousands of New Yorkers. Since DeSantis is saving lives and Cuomo is ending them, can the rest of the country start watching the Florida press conferences and not New York’s?
When is Cuomo’s mass murder trial scheduled to start?
Nicely put! Thanks for your post
I will wholeheartedly second a spot on post. 👍🏻😷
“The President is hardly blameless”
You have been pimping this meme for too long and I expect that from a liberal who spends most of his time on MDN criticizing president Trump with tedious opinions, day by day. Fair game enough, it is what it is.
What you continually FAIL to recognize is the myriad streams of information and disinformation world wide since the Covid-19 crisis began.
You fail to recognize WHO that yourself championed in previous posts LIED to the world, played politics working with the Chinese Communist Government and officially minimized the threat.
You fail to recognize the Chinese enforced a gag order on information for weeks allowing their infected citizens to travel worldwide and several doctors working in the labs are simply gone with no explanation to this day.
You fail to recognize the Chinese public officials blamed the USA for the virus. That ranks right up there with President Bill Clinton, “I did not have sex with that woman, not a single time!” 🤣
You fail to recognize many in the mainstream media and Dr. Fauci for weeks downplayed the threat of the virus in the first two months of 2020.
Which culminates and brings me to the bottom line: President Trump bombarded with CONFLICTING INFORMATION cut through it like a hot knife through butter. Decisively enacted a travel ban from China and later other countries.
Pelosi criticized the president at the time and then lately in a moment of revisionist Alzheimers, said he did not go far enough. Nothing like politicians pitifully playing it BOTH ways to shamelessly take advantage of a crisis.
The president and his team have done a remarkable job!
Pity the poor fools, politically and otherwise, that just don’t see REALITY…👍🏻🇺🇸🦅
Very eloquent!
The Chinese coverup didn’t fool anybody but the President, who was still praising their response well into March. The intellegence community and CDC knew better. His briefers had been telling him the truth since at least early January. As always, he only heard what he wanted to hear. He was not worried about a pandemic, but only about a business slowdown that might affect his re-election. He downplayed the threat and his subordinates followed his lead. We lost two critical months for preparation.
It is simply untrue that he “decisively ordered a ban on travel from China.” It was hardly decisive. By then a couple of dozen other countries had already enacted much tighter border controls and most international airlines had already cancelled all their China flights.
Besides which, the President continued to allow American citizens, permanent residents, members of their families, diplomats, and some others to enter the US with only minimal screening and no follow up. The same was true of his later European “ban” that did not even cover most of Europe. Tens of thousands of potentially infected people entered the country with his approval.
Not even Winston Smith can re-write that history.
“Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday chastised House Democrats for prioritizing oversight of President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, but overlooking China’s duplicity during the outbreak.”
— NewsMax
USER: “The Chinese coverup didn’t fool anybody but the President”
TOTALLY FALSE! YOU LIE!
USER: “The intellegence community and CDC knew better. His briefers had been telling him the truth since at least early January”
Produce the evidence! What you fail to recognize and you did not dispute any part of my post. Listen up anti-Trump Liberal, the president was presented with FALSE INFORMATION FROM China, WHO, the mainstream media, Dr. Fauci and yes it took time to cut through the 🐂💩 and act accordingly and decisively!
Your mission here on MDN daily is to parrot the latest Democrat attack meme the president was too slow to react. I’ve already seen as such on Democrat attack ads.
You are nothing more than a useful tool and shill for the Democrat Party. Fairness and objectively is not in your playbook.
Please deny who you are lying liberal…🖕🏼
In other news, GeoB and Senator Graham chastised the police for prioritizing robbery-in-progress calls while overlooking fraud cases that happened months ago outside their jurisdiction.
The Senate is obviously happy to stand by and do nothing while the Executive Branch systematically dismantles all the internal and external audit controls that prevent the use of trillions in taxpayer dollars to reward the President’s allies and disadvantage those he sees as enemies. It worked in Ukraine, so why not expand the program?
China mishandled the virus outbreak. Nobody doubts that today. That is in the past. We cannot change it. Focusing on that today is a deliberate distraction.
The President was told that the Chinese were underplaying the outbreak by at least early January, but he kept defending them well into March… long after the Chinese themselves had acknowledged the truth. Nothing that China did can excuse the shameful American response.
Response to TxUser May 4 at 8:47 am.
“In other news,” TxUser good to read DID NOT DISPUTE the facts in my post.
First USER was posting the Intel agencies warned President Trump in November and he did nothing. Now the latest meme is early January, both times with zero verifiable facts.
USER DENIAL escalated further after the media and Dr. Fauci In February in lockstep essentially said the virus was no big deal and nothing to worry about. I have seen the media clips and Fauci comments, obviously you have not.
It bears repeating: President Trump and his team cut through the media, China, WHO and CDC bloated 🐂💩 claims like a hot knife through butter and enacted a travel ban from China.
Highly criticized at the time by Pelosi and Buffoon Biden on the stumbling trail that lately in revisionist history Democrats want us to believe the President did not act quickly enough and they support the action. HA!
On one hand you gotta love the Desperate Democrats Disinformation Deployed Daily. We have here one of their loyal TOOLS here, TxUser.
The fight for freedom absent Democrat opinion and disinformation is FULL ON. Freedom!…🇺🇸🦅
As usual, you lie. I never said that Trump was informed of the outbreak in November. I said that the Intelligence Community knew in November and kicked it upstairs. He should have been informed then, but apparently wasn’t because he has created a climate in his Administration that discourages giving him bad news. The delay until January to inform him is not attributable to China or the WHO, but to presidential appointees working in the White House.
His failure to do anything then for almost ten weeks (except a too-late and purely cosmetic China “ban” that was as porous as a sieve) is on him personally. I have seen the same clips you have, and they do NOT say that the virus “was no big deal and nothing to worry about.” I am quite confident that nobody in the public health community was telling him that behind closed doors, either, whatever his economic advisors might have been saying.
The clips you misquote actually say that the virus was a very big deal in China and could be a very big deal here if our mitigation efforts did not stop community spread. Before spread was confirmed, there was very little that individual Americans could do about it, so there was no point in altering our everyday routines or pointlessly worrying. Boycotting Oriental restaurants or avoiding Chinatown was not going to help.
That message was no excuse for the government’s failure to take effective mitigation steps or the failure to prepare for the outbreak that the lack of mitigation made inevitable. By the time the President took the virus seriously, it was too late for anything short of a complete lockdown… one that he could have avoided, and that is therefore his responsibility.
The health experts advised the lockdown to provide breathing room for setting up a proper mitigation protocol with adequate testing, isolation, and contact tracing. The idea was to protect our health system from a total collapse as nearly happened in NYC by spreading the cases out, “flattening the curve” while the protocol was put in place.
Surprise, surprise! The same President and economic advisers who counseled complete inaction from the first White House briefing around January 4 until the middle of March were not listening to the health experts about the purpose of the lockdown. As far as I can tell, they have done Jack Squat over the past eight weeks to promote a national protocol for testing, isolation, and contact tracing.
We are in essentially the same place we were on March 12, but with a lot more contagious people out there. They will inevitably infect the folks who are emerging from lockdown because the President and some of the governors are either implying or outright telling them that they will be safe (or at least better off than they were in lockdown).
What? The travel ban allowed Americans to return home? If you are against that, fine. But, you would have to make the case against repatriating Americans.
No problem with readmitting them. It could have been done even faster. My problem is that the folks entering from China were, at most, submitted to a temperature scan. Anybody below 100 F. was waved right through to the public arrivals area of the airport and allowed to take a commercial flight or public transport to their final destination. By then, it was well known that patients began shedding the virus days before they showed symptoms and that some never showed symptoms.
The returnees were supposed to self-quarantine, but nobody followed up to see if they did. Local public health authorities were not notified of the presence of all those potentially infectious people. With a virus as contagious as this one, the exceptions to the ban made it ineffective.