Former White House strategist Steve Bannon called for a “full shutdown” in the United States to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
“I don’t think we have months to do this,’ Bannon told Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures, later adding, “Drop the hammer. Don’t mitigate the virus. Don’t spread the curve. Shatter the curve and go full hammer on the virus right now with a full shutdown. Use the stimulus to kind of bridge that economic crisis — it may take $2 trillion, it may take $3 trillion — to force cash into the little entrepreneur and to the little guy.”
Trump shot down the possibility of a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the virus on Friday.
“I don’t think we’ll ever find that necessary,” he told reporters at a White House briefing on the pandemic.
No state has completely prevented residents from going outside or to work, but several have told residents to stay home and have ordered nonessential businesses to stop operations.
As of Sunday afternoon, more than 31,000 in the U.S. had tested positive for the virus, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker. Of those cases, at least 390 people had died, and 176 had recovered.
