Fox News host Chris Wallace suggested on Sunday that the United States would be seeing fewer deaths from the coronavirus if President Donald Trump had taken the epidemic seriously in January and February.
Wallace made the remarks as he was interviewing Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"Let's start with that New York Times report that from January on, top public health officials were warning the president about the threat from the pandemic and that he did not take action until mid-March," Wallace said.
"How much did those lost weeks cost us?" the Fox News host wondered.
Inglesby argued that the United States did not have the political will to shut down the economy in January.
"That article reinforces what we've heard along the way, which is that many in the administration were very worried about this as early as January and February," Inglesby said. "If we had acted on some of those warnings earlier, we would be in a much better position in terms of diagnostics and masks and personal protective equipment and getting our hospitals ready."
"If we had imposed social distancing, stay at home at the end of January or early February, would there be a dramatically smaller number of cases and deaths?" Wallace asked.
"If we had done a lot of diagnostic testing earlier, it's possible we would have seen enough disease to get the will to do that in February," Inglesby agreed. "They earlier we put in place social distancing, the earlier we would have gotten to a peak."
