Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary
Alex Azar told Breitbart News exclusively that President Donald Trump in
the coming days will work with his medical and scientific advisers to
make a determination on how and when to reopen the country after
wide-scale closure in the effort to stop the spread of the Chinese
coronavirus.
Azar is one of Trump’s closest advisers and a top member of Vice
President Mike Pence’s Coronavirus Task Force to lead the American
response to this crisis. He said that the president will consult with
White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield,
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr.
Anthony Fauci, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Dr. Stephen Hahn, among others, about the so-called “curve” of the
disease and how effective the extraordinary measures to stop its spread
taken by Americans nationwide have been.
“The president will look at the data with his top medical advisers,
people like Dr. Debbie Birx, Tony Fauci, Robert Redfield, Steve Hahn at
FDA, as well as I’m sure outside advisers, and will make a decision in
the next week whether to continue the 15 days or whether there are
appropriate modifications he would make to the rest of the
country,” Azar told Breitbart News in a phone interview on Tuesday
afternoon. “For instance, whether it’s to look, as Dr. Birx I believe
said yesterday in the press conference, to look at maybe focusing in
localized areas instead of common national recommendations.”
“But that will be from what his advisers are seeing in the data,
where the hotspots are, and whether we’re seeing communities that have
taken these types of efforts and actually lived up to them, if you’re
seeing a bending of the curve from an epidemiological perspective,” he
explained. “That might be difficult because with epidemiological data
there’s always a lag in terms of what you’re seeing, so some of this, in
terms of the advice from his top scientific advisers, will be based on
their experience and expertise, and I’m sure the president will have to
balance against that the very valid concerns about the impact on the
economy and the social fabric in the United States against those
restrictions.”
The data that the president and his team of doctors and scientists
will consider as they make their decision on reopening America, Azar
said, is most importantly mortality rates of the disease—but also
infection rates and other data.
“Dr. Birx said yesterday at the press conference the most important
data point you look at that is essentially irrefutable is mortality
data,” Azar said. “How many people are dying from Covid-19? That will be
your firmest bit of data in assessing the situation. You will also look
at infection rates and new cases, but the problem there is you never
can test everybody. So the testing gives you an indicator and gives you a
trend, but it is certainly less secure information than mortality data
that you would look at.”
Trump, later on Tuesday after Azar’s interview with Breitbart News, said
during a Fox News town hall that he hopes to reopen much of the United
States by Easter Sunday, April 12. Trump, with Dr. Birx standing
alongside him on Monday evening in the White House briefing room, began
signaling the reopening of the country. He seems to have an ally in New
York’s Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has also voiced support for
reopening the country.
President Trump has called this fight against the virus a “war”
against an “invisible enemy” and has noted how people are calling him a
“wartime president” in responding to the crisis. If that’s the case,
that Trump is leading an American war again the virus, then that means
Azar is one of the president’s generals in this war. In that vein, asked
how President Trump is approaching this from a wartime perspective,
Azar explained that Trump has rallied the whole country against the
coronavirus in much the same way President Woodrow Wilson did in World
War I or President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in World War II.
“President Trump as our commander in chief has been marshaling every
resource, not just of our government but of the economy as well, in the
way that President Wilson in World War I would have or President
Roosevelt in World War II,” Azar said. “That’s where you see the
complete mobilization of the production capacity of the United States to
make sure we have the personal protective equipment and supplies, that
we have ventilators, that we have hospital capacities, that we can
handle the surge—that we have the same country that did the Manhattan
Project develop a vaccine [candidate] within three days, three days of
getting the Chinese sequence, we have a vaccine candidate that is now in
human testing eight weeks after that was developed at a historically
fast rate, that we marshal all of our resources to therapeutics. So it’s
really that kind of mentality that President Trump leads, like a
wartime president in harvesting every aspect of the government, the
economy, and the social order towards defeating an enemy.”
What’s more, while President Trump has invoked the Defense Production
Act through which the federal government can compel companies to make
products necessary for addressing the national emergency, he has not
needed to actually force any company to make any product as of this time
because companies are stepping up and helping voluntarily. Azar told
Breitbart News this is because the president has rallied the whole
country behind his “Whole of America” approach to winning this war.
“Because of President Trump’s leadership and his call to action, he
has mobilized the entire economy,” Azar said. “We see this and we see
companies coming forward and saying ‘how can I help?’ Not saying ‘How
can I help and pay me’ even, but just ‘how can I help?’ You’ve heard of
major auto manufacturers saying that we will make ventilators for the
country, you’ve seen industrial suppliers come forward and say ‘I have
half a million or a million N95 respirators’—those are the masks—‘here,
have them, I’m giving them to you’ instead of the days where they might
put a markup on that, and say ‘I’ve got them but here’s a price.’ The
president has called all of the country towards this war on the
invisible enemy. They’re coming forward, and so while we have those
authorities if we need to, I have been very impressed by the nation’s
manufacturers in particular coming forward to do everything they can do
to help our country.”
Azar also said that regarding critical supply chains for key
pharmaceuticals and medical supplies and devices, this crisis has
highlighted President Trump’s vision—which he has believed and fought
for even before coronavirus—pushing for bringing manufacturing back home
domestically is correct. Azar also said that he is not concerned that
any critical medications will be withheld from foreign countries,
including especially China, despite some rumblings from Chinese state
media about threats to withhold medicines from the U.S. amid this
crisis.
“These are complex multi-billion dollar supply chains with sterile
FDA-approved manufacturing, so they don’t move overnight, but this
certainly has highlighted an issue President Trump was already concerned
about which is thinking about medical products as strategic products
for the safety of our country and thinking in the future about how that
supply chain needs to reside and be less dependent on foreign sources,”
Azar said. “I’m confident that President Trump in his dealings with
President Xi and China will ensure that we have access to products that
we need if they’re able to be produced. That’s why it’s good that China
has bent its curve and is getting back to work and is reopening
factories. I’m sure President Trump will, as he always does, fight for
the American worker and fight for our healthcare in working with any
country.”
On chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, anti-malarial drugs that have
shown anecdotal promise in treating people who become infected with
coronavirus, Azar said that Trump’s vision as president on this matter
and more broadly with the field of emerging medicines for patients in
dire need has been clear. He called Trump the “Right to Try president”
after the president’s successful efforts in getting exploratory
treatments to patients in need, and said Trump is aiming to follow that
same vision of bringing hope to the public with these experimental and
thus-far-untested medications.
“This is an example of President Trump’s longstanding commitment to
patients in distress have access to even experimental therapies as long
as they go in with their eyes open that there are risks with unproven
therapies that have not been established as safe for use by the FDA,”
Azar said. “The president will leave no stone unturned to be sure that
there are therapeutics available for people to try. Remember, this is
the Right to Try president. This is the president who was the first to
get Right to Try legislation so that people who have no hope could have
new hope on new therapies that haven’t yet been proven but could give
that a try. That’s the same mentality he’s bringing here to COVID-19,
which is if there are products that doctors think might be helpful, we
need to make sure there are no regulatory barriers to the doctors being
able to use them if they might be able to save a patient’s life.”
Azar concluded the interview by again laying out the end game in the
effort to eradicate the coronavirus and what steps the government is
taking to crush it and be ready in case it comes back later.
“Diseases have a natural curve to them,” Azar said. “That’s why we
talk about the ‘curve.’ There’s a natural increase and then decrease
with any disease, whether that’s the nature of the disease or, as what
happens with most respiratory illnesses, a seasonality whereas as warmer
weather approaches people engage in natural social distancing—they’re
outside and more spread out—or even as the disease responds unfavorably
to humid and warmer conditions. That’s why our goal is if we can delay
this curve through the president’s historic actions and contain it and
keep it outside of our borders with restrictions on travel from China,
from Europe, and from Iran et cetera—or with our 15 Days to Slow the
Spread action to flatten that curve and to make sure during its impact
that it’s not overtaxing our health care system’s capacity. There will
be a natural decline in that curve. It will happen. We use that time
effectively to develop a vaccine and therapeutics so that in the event
that the curve returns with a wave in the fall or next winter, if
there’s seasonality and it were to come back, we will continue to work
on those longer-term efforts like therapies and vaccines.”
Common sense, strong leadership, and a real concern for Americans! Meanwhile, the Left would see people dying to push their evil agenda. Remember this come election time, and be sure to pass along the information to others.
President Donald Trump said during a Fox News town hall on Tuesday that he wanted to get the economy reopened by Easter.
“I’d love to have it open by Easter,” Trump said, setting a date for reopening the country for the first time.
Easter is on April 12.
“I would love to have the country opened up and rearing to go by Easter,” he repeated.
“That would be a great American resurrection,” Fox News moderator Bill Hemer replied.
The president has promised
to listen to his doctors and advisers on loosening restrictions set by
the government to fight the coronavirus pandemic, but has said would
ultimately make the final decision.
Trump appeared upbeat during the event, pleased that the stock market rose over 1,600 points on Tuesday.
He said he looked forward to the day that Americans could go to work,
noting that a massive economic depression had its own death toll.
“We can socially distance ourselves and go to work, and you’ll have
to work a little bit harder,” Trump said. “You can clean your hands five
times as more as you used to, you don’t have to shake hands anymore
with people.”
Trump said again that he wanted the economy reopened in weeks, not months and suggested that the United States would be ready.
“It’s not built to shut down,” he said. “Our people are
full of vim and vigor and energy. They don’t want to be locked in a
house or an apartment or some space.”
The president said that putting restrictions on Americans last week was “one of the most difficult decisions that he ever made.”
“You’re basically turning off the country,” he said, adding that, “I wasn’t happy about it, and I also knew I had to do it.”
Trump said that the economic shutdown was “painful” and
“destabilizing” but that it would soon be time for Americans to return
to their lives.
“We have to go back to work, much sooner than people thought, and
people can go back to work and they can also practice good judgment,” he
said.
Dr. Deborah Birx said during the town hall that she would continue
looking at the data, and urged Americans to continue following the
restrictions set by the Centers for Disease Control.
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