(here’s the gist; fauci claims he made the recommendation to trump to social distance earlier and trump didn’t take it)
Host Jake Tapper asked, “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. Why?”
Fauci said, “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.”
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.”
There’s a lot of second guessing that could be asked about.
“Dr. Fauci, if you hadn’t accepted at face value what China was saying about the disease early, would it have saved lives?”
“Dr. Fauci, if you realized that there was significant asymptomatic spread of the disease earlier, would it have saved lives? Shouldn’t we have been more cautious?”
Everyone was muddling their way through this, Fauci and Trump included.
That’s what I read. Frankly, I don’t see what the big deal is. Facui will be asked about this at the next presser. Were I Trump, I’d have no problem letting him answer. Fauci will walk it back, and he left himself plenty of room to do so.
Fauci is on the record in the popular media, and in at least one med journal, that this isn’t that much more than a bad flu. Besides, the dems were urging people not social distance thru early March.
What bugs me is why is this the federal government’s job? Each state can decide what to do with federal advice. A national order or guideline was not needed.