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One can understand President Trump’s impatience — everyone shares it.

But for him to say that the country is going to be back to normal in just a couple weeks, as he did Monday night, is wildly optimistic.

What is the point of all this pain if we don’t make sure that the coronavirus is truly under control? We risk an explosion of infections if we rush back into regular life.

Take Hong Kong. It implemented social isolation, movement restrictions and other measures right away, and in the first week of March, it had only 150 cases. But then it relaxed the regulations, and expats started pouring back in, Bloomberg news reports. Now cases have doubled. In response, Chief Executive Carrie Lam has had to introduce new quarantine restrictions.

Can you imagine if the United States gave an all-clear signal, then officials were forced to reverse themselves? The double-hit on the economy — not to mention the mental well-being of Americans — would be devastating.

“We’re going to be opening our country up for business, because our country was meant to be open,” Trump said Monday night. True. But now that we’ve taken these extraordinary steps, now that we’re spending days indoors and learning not to shake hands, we cannot let our desire for normalcy ruin the plan.

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!” Trump tweeted earlier Monday.

Fine, but make that decision based on the opinion of medical and other experts. Not our collective discomfort.