The top infectious disease expert in the United States called for a nationwide shutdown amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“I don’t understand why that’s not happening,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said during CNN’s town hall focused on coronavirus Thursday evening.
The majority of Americans - about 80% - are under lockdown orders, with governors closing schools, banning social gatherings and ordering residents to stay home. But a handful of states have enacted only partial stay-at-home orders.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases urged governors who have resisted calls to issue stay-at-home orders to reconsider.
“You know, the tension between federally mandated versus states’ rights to do what they want is something I don’t want to get into,” he said. “But if you look at what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that.”
Fauci is not alone in calling for a nationwide shutdown.
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and billionaire philanthropist behind the Gates Foundation, called for strong action Tuesday to combat the spread of coronavirus: a nationwide shutdown.
“There’s no question the United States missed the opportunity to get ahead of the novel coronavirus. But the window for making important decisions hasn’t closed,” Gates wrote in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post. “The choices we and our leaders make now will have an enormous impact on how soon case numbers start to go down, how long the economy remains shut down and how many Americans will have to bury a loved one because of COVID-19.”
Gates argues now is the time for a “consistent nationwide approach to shutting down,” citing disparity between states.
Gates called the inconsistency “a recipe for disaster.”
He wrote, “Because people can travel freely across state lines, so can the virus. The country’s leaders need to be clear: Shutdown anywhere means shutdown everywhere. Until the case numbers start to go down across America — which could take 10 weeks or more — no one can continue business as usual or relax the shutdown. Any confusion about this point will only extend the economic pain, raise the odds that the virus will return, and cause more deaths.”
Comments by Fauci and Gates are in contrast to the message shared by President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly pushed against a national shutdown.
“You have to look -- you have to give a little flexibility,” Trump said Wednesday during the daily White House press briefing. “If you have a state in the Midwest, or if Alaska, for example, doesn’t have a problem, it’s awfully tough to say, ‘close it down.’ We have to have a little bit of flexibility.”
COVID-19, the novel coronavirus causing the pandemic, is expected to peak nationwide in mid-April. Just under 94,000 fatalities are expected across the United States by August.
The impact on a state-by-state level will vary widely.
New York is expected to be the hardest hit state, with 16,000 deaths projected. Single-day death tolls are expected to rise to more than 2,500 in the next two-and-a-half weeks.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has reached more than 83,000 in New York - including more than 8,000 overnight. Of the confirmed 83,712 cases, 47,439 are in New York City’s five boroughs.
Statewide death totals from the virus in New York rose to 1,941, up 391 from Tuesday.
“That number will continue to go up,” Cuomo said. “We are still looking for a curve; we are still looking to see where we hit the plateau."
He emphasized that it’s “Not just New York,” adding, “If you believe these numbers — 16,000 deaths in New York — that means you’re going to get tens of thousands of deaths outside of New York.
“So, to the extent people watch their nightly news in Kansas and say, well, this is a New York problem, that’s not what these numbers say. It says it’s a New York problem today. Tomorrow, it’s a Kansas problem and a Texas problem and a New Mexico problem," Cuomo said.
In Massachusetts, coronavirus is expected to claim the lives of more than 2,000 Massachusetts residents by summer.
The number of deaths per day is expected to peak in Massachusetts to just under 100 deaths daily in the next two-and-a-half weeks. A total of 2,357 deaths are projected for Massachusetts by August.
Gov. Charlie Baker shared projections from state health officials on Thursday, said that up to 172,000 Massachusetts residents could potentially be infected.
The impact in Massachusetts was mitigated by shutdown efforts enacted by the governor’s office last month.
Now, Fauci said, the key is for people to continue social distancing methods to slow the curve.
“If you back off, and you don’t mitigate, there is a possibility that number (of deaths) will go up,” Fauci said on CNN.
“And that is the worst possible thing in the world you want to see,” he said. “And that’s the reason why I am so adamant about when we say we have got to follow those guidelines, you really got to take it seriously.”
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