President Donald Trump, on March 23, retweeted his youngest daughter Tiffany’s claim that the US has “eight days to slow the spread” of the novel coronavirus.
The tweet comes at a time when the POTUS is facing criticism for suggesting that he could lift lockdowns across the country significantly earlier than what the experts have advised.
Tiffany took to Twitter to share an image from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), showing “15 days” crossed out and replaced with “8” despite health experts warning that it could be a matter of months before social distancing measures can be lifted safely. On March 23, Trump had said that he will reconsider the social distancing policy in place in the country within days and that Americans will “very soon” be open for business.
Trump received criticism after he highlighted the economy of the country and downplayed the medical situation at a White House coronavirus press briefing on March 23.
“America will, again, and soon, be open for business. Very soon,” Trump said. “A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. Lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. We’re not going to let the cure be worse than the problem.”
He complained about the caution advised by healthcare professionals, saying that he told his team that the doctors would want to close the “entire world.”
“I was telling them, if it was up to the doctors, they would keep it shut down, they would say ‘let’s shut down the entire world,’ You can’t do that,” Trump said at the press conference, the Daily Mail reported.
Trump’s suggestion of lifting the lockdown early was also condemned by experts. Tom Inglesby, a director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, shortly after Trump’s suggestion, tweeted a thread aimed at “anyone advising the end of social distancing.”
“COVID-19 would spread widely, rapidly, terribly, could kill potentially millions in the year ahead with huge social and economic impact across the country,” the expert said, who is listed as specializing in pandemics and infectious diseases.
“How do we gain time to let hosps get more supplies & prepare for high number of pts? How do we lower the speed of spread of COVID in US? How do we lower odds that ICUs will run out of vents, hospitals run out of space? The answer for now is large scale social distancing,” Inglesby said.
A former Barack Obama health official, while talking to Politico, said: “It is way too early to even consider rolling back any guidelines. With cases and deaths rising by the day, the country must double down, not lighten up, on social distancing and related measures.”
The US as of March 24 has witnessed over 550 deaths because of coronavirus and has over 43,000 confirmed cases and Trump is yet to mandate a national lockdown.
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