Trump: People are safe to work if they wash hands '5 times more' than usual

Donald Trump on March 24 in a Fox News town hall, speaking about wanting to get people back to work by April 12:

DONALD TRUMP: We can socially distance ourselves and go to work.

 

And you’ll have to work a little bit harder; you can clean your hands five times more than you used to.

 

You don’t have to shake hands anymore with people, that might be something good coming out of this, but I must tell you as a politician, it’s a lot warmer when you walk into a crowd and you’re shaking a lot of hands — they love me and I love them — but it is a little bit colder, but you won’t be shaking hands for at least a while and things will happen.

 

But we have to put the country to work.

Public health experts say that ending social distancing measures too early could be disastrous for the spread of COVID-19 disease.

“I cannot see that all of a sudden, next week or two weeks from now it’s going to be over. I don’t think there’s a chance of that,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said in an interview with MSNBC on Monday.

“I think we should do everything we possibly can do,” he added. “I mean, in all sectors, because obviously as I’ve said so many times, when you think you’re maybe overreacting, you probably are not acting as forcefully as you should. So as we’ve always said, we’ve got to try very much to stay ahead of the curve.”

Surgeon General Jerome Adams also warned Monday that the outbreak would worsen in the coming days. “I want America to understand this week, it’s going to get bad,” he said.

He added, “Right now, there are not enough people out there who are taking this seriously.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.