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Gottlieb refuted President Donald Trump, in whose administration he served, who has repeatedly claimed that the United States has “turned the corner” on the coronavirus as infections began to reach record highs these past last weeks.
Outbreaks are on the rise in all states, with some states reporting record hospitalizations while the United States reported more than 99,000 new cases on Friday – a new peak – even as Trump continues to downplay the virus and organize massive election rallies in the Midwestern states that are seeing the worst of the latest wave.
Gottlieb said the country is “just at the start of what looks like exponential growth” in areas like the Midwest and the Great Lakes region, a trend he called “very worrying.”
“The positivity rate is over 10% in 15 states,” he noted. “And all states are above 1 [percent], which means this is an expanding epidemic right now. It’s very disturbing as we head into winter.
A positivity rate for coronavirus tests is generally considered too high if it exceeds 5%.
The former FDA chief also warned that as the president continued to launch optimistic assessments of his response to the virus and the country’s situation with the pandemic, the facts on the ground would soon be too dire to be ignored.
Asked about a candid interview with Trump infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci gave the Washington Post over the weekend, Gottlieb said, “I think the facts are going to overtake any political dialogue very quickly.” Fauci accused Trump of not wanting to hear public health assessments that contradicted his desire to overcome the virus.
“I think in the next two or three weeks what is going on in the country will be unmistakable, and we are going to have to start taking some tough action,” Gottlieb said, although he added that he was not considering not the type of shelter-in-place approach that many states took in the spring.
He stressed that he did not believe that political support for these drastic measures existed “even at the state level”, suggesting instead a more targeted approach.
Gottlieb urged Trump to focus on getting resources to states in need, which he said includes passing another stimulus bill through Congress. Discussions over such a package between the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have stalled after months of back-and-forth, though Trump has promised a deal can be reached after the election, whether he wins or loses.
Gottlieb also urged the president to use his position to “galvanize” Americans to comply with mitigation measures like wearing face masks – a practice Trump laughed at – and argued that winning or losing in Tuesday’s election, the president will likely be in charge during the most difficult times of the pandemic.
“It’s going to play out largely over the next couple of months,” Gottlieb predicted. “By the time a president is reinstated in January, whoever he is, we’ll probably go through the most acute phases of this situation, we’ll go down the epidemic curve. So this is really going to take place under the leadership of the president. What he does over the next two months will be very important.
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