The suggestion of closure is excessive and it is not certain that the federal government can even put such a drastic measure into effect, which also opposes the statements of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, who said the country would not tolerate any other lock-up and that mask and social estification were the desire to push.
Osterholm is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and decided Monday as a member of the COVID-19 Advisory Board of the Biden Transition Team. However, Osterholm does not direct or speak independently, so his comments do not reflect the transition team’s policy.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Osterholm in particular referred to an article he co-wrote for the New York Times in August with Neel Kashkari, chairman of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, in which he told Yahoo: “We predicted Array . . . where we’d be now we said it would happen if we didn’t do anything different. “
Osterholm said that if the government can simply provide money to Americans and businesses, it can provide a respite for the country to put in place a national blockade of transitoryness.
“We have a giant cash reserve there that we can borrow,” Osterholm said Wednesday, noting “the federal government’s traditionally low interest rates. “
He added that the government could simply pay the lost wages of workers, the losses of small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as the governments of the city, the state and the county.
“If we did that, we might make sure 4 to six weeks, and if we did, we could just number them, as they did in Asia, as they did in New Zealand and Australia, and then we could take a look at the availability of vaccines in the first quarter of next year and bring the economy back much earlier. “Osterholm said.
However, Fauci said the blockade would not be mandatory if the country is going to put public fitness measures into force.
“If we can take public fitness measures, we wouldn’t have to,” Fauci said Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America. “”The most productive anti-blocking strategy is to intensify public fitness measures before blocking them. you can do that right, you don’t have to take that step that other people seek to avoid, which has so many implications at once, both psychologically and economically. We’d like not to do that. “
Fauci also said “help is on the way,” referring to a vaccine.
“You know, if you think about it metaphorically, the cavalry comes here. . . if we can just hold on, take the public fitness measures we’re talking about, we’re going to take that under control, I promise. “Fauci says.
Although Osterholm was an adviser to Biden, at a recent ABC News city corridor before the election, Biden said he did not think it was obligatory to lock himself up, but said he would pay attention to science.
“It can involve the pandemic by being rational and overloading the economy,” Biden said. “You can open businesses and schools if you actually give them the recommendation they need, as well as the cash to do so. “
When asked about Osterholm’s comments, Biden’s communications director Kate Bedingfield told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Biden was the target of the campaign’s plan, which called for encouraging mask guarantees nationwide and driving testing.
“You will be informed through the public fitness experience and experience that exists,” he said, adding that he will “move forward with the plans he presented in the campaign. “
Anne Flaherty, Molly Nagle and Jordyn Phelps of ABC News contributed to this report.
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