Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the leading experts in the White House’s response to the coronavirus, warned that demonstrations happening across the country protesting the quarantine orders will prolong the shutdown.
Residents in at least 20 states have taken to the streets to protest their governors’ stay-at-home orders, arguing that the country should start to reopen and recover from the virus. More than 21 million people have lost their jobs in the last four weeks.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was asked about the dangers of these protests during an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday.
“I think, you know, that the message is that, clearly, this is something that is hurting from the standpoint of economics, from the standpoint of things that have nothing to do with the virus,” Fauci said. “But unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery, economically, is not gonna happen.”
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“If you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re gonna set yourself back,” he continued. “So as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening, it’s going to backfire. That’s the problem.”
President Trump has taken a very different tone when addressing the lockdown protests.
Last Friday in social media posts he urged that people of Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia “liberate” themselves and reopen their economies. He was later asked about it during a White House press briefing, where he said that some of the governors had implemented restrictions that were “too tough” but stopped short of saying the government leaders should revoke the orders.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said that she was considering extending social distancing guidelines in response to Michigan residents who protested her stay-at-home restrictions on Wednesday.
Trump claimed that the protesters were being responsible in how they were demonstrating.
“These are people expressing their views,” he explained. “I see where they are, and I see the way they’re working. They seem to be very responsible people to me, but they’ve been treated a little bit rough.”
