All focus turns to testing capacity, but how effective will testing be and how practical are our testing plans?

Plus, local officials get authoritarian and protests start to royal the country.

I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Your data is your business protected at ExpressVPN.com.

That's express at VPN.com slash Ben. Well, I hope that you had a somewhat relaxing weekend as we all

continue to undergo this incredibly painful and difficult process. Obviously, some people in the

United States are suffering gravely, not just in terms of health, but tons and tons of people have lost their jobs. I mean, this is a crisis that is roiling, and in the middle of a roiling crisis, the last thing you need are people taking political advantage of the roiling crisis in order to enact their agenda. And this is why it's really important to look to Europe and see how they are reopening and look to the various strategies on reopening. It's why it's really important to use critical thinking when we talk

about exactly what sort of steps need to be taken for reopening because there is a data-based

idea that we can reopen if we hit certain milestones and then there are certain data-free ideas

like we can never reopen at any point. Or we should reopen immediately,

no holds barred, no masks, no social distancing, and none of this is useful. So what we should

first do is look at the data. And then what we're going to see is that American politics,

it's amazing how fast people retreat to their priors. It's amazing how fast people use crisis

as an opportunity to push their preferred political agenda. And how in response people immediately say, well, you know what? Then I'm not going to buy any of what you are saying. We've seen this with regard to climate change, for example. So the left wasn't content to simply just say, listen, climate change is happening and it's mostly human cause. Then it became, this is a global crisis. It's a crisis of unprecedented proportion. And it also means they're going to have to completely restructure the world economy and the American economy. And at that point, a lot of people began to think, wait a second, wait a second. I'm with you on the science. I'm okay with that. I'm even willing to go along with you on maybe this is a serious problem over the course of the next century that is gradually building. But I'm not willing to go along with something that seems as though it is a pretext for you to do all the things you have already wanted to do. And that is what it is starting to feel like in the United States as politicians lock down beyond what is necessary as they take more and more petty authoritarian instances. As you see people attempting to shut down protests, not on the basis of public health alone. By the way, if you are protesting,

if you're out there protesting today or yesterday, recommendation. I made this recommendation last week. If you want to protest to reopen the government, I'm actually fine with that. I don't have any problem with that. That is a First Amendment exercise. Not only that, I sort of agree with you that we need to be taking more expedited, Not sort of. I largely agree with you. We need to be taking more expedited steps to reopen America's economy because I believe that the American people are responsible. I believe the American people are capable of wearing a mask when they are going to be within six feet of others, that the American people are capable of social distancing, that we are a free people who are responsible and don't want to infect our neighbors. That being said, if you're going to

go out in protest, why? that the American people are capable of social distancing, that we are a free people who are responsible

and don't want to infect our neighbors. That being said, if you're going to go out in protest, why don't you do that? Wear a mask, socially distance, takes a bullet away from the media that wished to paint you as a bunch of cooks. And there are some cooks out there protesting, but there are plenty of cooks on the other side suggesting that we must shelter in place until kingdom come no matter what the economic consequences are. Okay, so we're going to get into all of this.

Let's begin with what is happening over in Europe. So in Europe, they are beginning to slowly reemerge from their lockdown. According to the Wall Street Journal bookstores, almost nothing else, among open again along desolate canals of Venice, restaurants and hotels remain shut. Cafes once packed with tourists, sit empty, but for two days a week, customers can browse for books so long as they wear a mask, disinfect their hands before shopping, and stay more than six feet apart. To comply, the city's Marco Polo bookstore has asked customers to answer one at a time in the morning or schedule a half-hour appointment for the afternoon. For a look at how hard it is to press play on a Western economy still battling

coronavirus, turn to Europe and to Italy, which is painstakingly freeing its shops and small

businesses and stages, easy and continent-wide lockdown that has kept nearly half a billion

people at home, nation by nation, and in some cases storefront by storefront, health

authorities in the European Union are selecting when and where commercial life can breathe

...