More Americans might now be alive and far fewer would be in hospital if president Donald Trump acted swiftly on the recommendations of health experts to emplace social distancing guidelines, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Trump only ordered social distancing in mid-March, or three weeks after the country's top health experts said he should do so.
Dr. Fauci said no one is going to deny lives could have been saved if Trump implemented containment measures earlier during the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking candidly on CNN's State of the Union Sunday, he said a different response timeline might have saved American lives.
"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," said Dr. Fauci. He responded to a question by Jake Tapper, who asked if social distancing and stay-at-home measures could have prevented deaths had they been put in place in February, instead of mid-March. Spring Break was in full swing at the time.
"Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated," according to Dr. Fauci. "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."
He did, however, admit the process leading up to this point was "complicated."
Dr. Fauci also said calls from health experts to implement life-saving social distancing measures were stymied by a lot of pushback early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Asked why Trump didn't recommend social distancing guidelines until mid-March, Dr. Fauci replied, "You know, Jake, as I have 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 we -- it is what it is. We are where we are right now."
A Trump administration official confirmed to media the government's top public health experts recommended during the third week of February to move away from the existing containment strategy and toward a mitigation strategy involving strong social distancing measures. Health officials came to this conclusion after conducting a tabletop exercise on February 21 to game out the results of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic. The exercise predicted 110 million infections, 7.7 million hospitalizations and 586,000 deaths.
Dr. Fauci's comments came a day after an explosive story from The New York Times revealing the Trump administration's missteps during the early days of the pandemic. The report also said Trump ignored his advisers' warnings about the health impacts from the pandemic.
Dr. Fauci later expressed cautious optimism the COVID-19 pandemic is slowing down in the United States. He believes parts of the country might start to reopen as soon as May.
Saying that while the U.S. won't suddenly turn back on like a light switch, there are indications some of the metrics used to gauge the crisis are starting to level off in some areas, according to Dr. Fauci. Asked when parts of the U.S. might start easing some of their strict social-distancing measures, Fauci said the process might probably begin "at least in some ways, maybe next month."
