In a Monday interview with NBC News affiliate TMJ4, former Vice President Joe Biden said Dr. Anthony Fauci should be the “only person” that the American public should hear from during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, seemingly casting aside other White House task force members such as Dr. Deborah Birx.
A partial transcript is as follows:
CHARLES BENSON: There’s a lot of uncertainty around the Democratic National Convention here in Milwaukee. The host committee has had to lay off some folks. Businesses, restaurants, hotels, they are in much need of this economic boost that would come from a convention. What is realistic? Is a virtual convention the most realistic?
JOE BIDEN: It’s hard to tell. We’ve got to follow the science. I very much, as any candidate would, wants to have an actual convention, be in a position where in the middle of August we are able to actually have a convention where people show up and you have businesses being able to open up more than they are now. But it requires the president to take action.
[…]
BENSON: So the likelihood of a four-day, two-day convention with thousands, tens of thousands of people?
BIDEN: The answer is I, honest to god, don’t know. It depends on what the science tells us. If we open up too quickly now, that will unlikely occur, but if we do this in a slow-motion way that is consistent with the scientists — listen, look — we’d all be better off if, for the next month and a half, the only person we heard from the White House was Dr. Fauci. We’d all be better off. I’m serious. I mean, to the scientist. That’s where we have to go. Listen to the science. It’s a false choice to say we’re either going to have an economy or we’re going to be healthy.