Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said if President Trump had shut down the country in February fewer lives would have been lost.
However, it should be noted that Fauci was among those predicting that more than 2 million Americans would die from the coronavirus. That number was later amended to 240,000. And it was further reduced to 60,000.
Also, the Centers for Disease Control is recommending that the cause of death should be cited as coronavirus even if patients have not been tested for coronavirus.
Fauci made his most recent pronouncement during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” with host Jake Tapper.
“The New York Times reported yesterday that you and other top officials wanted to recommend social and physical distancing guidelines to President Trump as far back as the third week of February, but the administration didn’t announce such guidelines to the American public until March 16th, almost a month later,” Tapper said. “Why?”
Fauci replied, “As I’ve said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But it is what it is. we are where we are right now.”
.@JakeTapper: Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing and stay-at-home measures had started in February instead of March?
Dr. Anthony Fauci: “…Obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different” pic.twitter.com/KfCsLB2OHr
— CNN (@CNN) April 12, 2020
Tapper said, “Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures, had started the third week of February instead of mid-March?”
Fauci said, “You know, Jake, again, it’s the what-would-have, what-could-have. It’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. But you’re right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”