During a remote CNN town hall on the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed President Donald Trump’s suggestion the United States economy could be opened back up by Easter Sunday.
Fauci, a member of the Coronavirus Task Force, said he thinks Trump was making “an aspiration projection to give people some hope.” But with the cases still increasing “dramatically” daily, Fauci said it is not yet “time to pull back.”
“Well, I think what the president was trying to do, he was making an aspirational projection to give people some hope,” Fauci said on CNN. “But he’s listening to us when we say that we’ve really got to reevaluate it in real-time, and any decision we make has to be based on the data. … When you have a situation where the cases today compared to tomorrow is increased dramatically and then the next day is increased dramatically, that’s no time to pull back. That’s when you’ve got to hunker down, nail down, mitigate, mitigate, mitigate, get the people taken care of. That’s what you’ve got to concentrate on. You have to go with the date.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent