Rep. Devin Nunes argued that the United States cannot remain under social distancing guidelines for much longer out of concern for the economy.
The California Republican discussed the potential ramifications of extending the guidelines through April on The Ingraham Angle with Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming Tuesday night.
As they discussed former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb’s public health plan for how to combat the virus, Ingraham claimed it would mean people “can’t go back to a normal life” for 12 months.
“Yeah, that’s not going to work. … The schools were just canceled out here in California, which is way overkill,” Nunes responded. “It’s possible kids could’ve went back to school in two weeks to four weeks, but they just canceled the rest of the schools. So, look: I’m optimistic here.”
He also praised U.S. efforts to find a treatment and a vaccine for the virus.
“I think that the drugs that are on the market now — look how quick we were able to get this approved, this new malaria drug,” the lawmaker argued. “There’s a lot of optimism here that we have in some of these drugs that are coming online. The vaccines are going to take a while, but look: We have this bill that we just passed last week, $2.2 trillion worth. We have to focus on keeping people employed.”
“If we don’t start to get people back to work in this country over the next week to two weeks, I don’t believe we can wait until, you know, the end of April. I just don’t know of any economy that’s ever survived where you unplug the entire economy and expect things to go back and be normal,” he warned. “The more tests that are out there, the more people that are getting testing, let’s learn about the treatments.”
Last month, Nunes faced backlash for recommending that people visit their local restaurants to help out small businesses instead of hoarding products from grocery stores.
