‘Hiding and washing your hands is not enough,’ says Biden’s Covid board member

In a Tuesday night interview on “The News with Shepard Smith,” Michael Osterholm, a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s coronavirus advisory board, stressed that Americans would receive government support if a shutdown occurs.

“If we ask anyone in America, be it an individual or a business, to close or lose a job because we want them to move away so that we can stop this pandemic, we have to understand that we have to take take care of them, ”Osterholm said.

Governors and mayors across the country have stepped up Covid restrictions as the pandemic sweeps across the country, with cases on the rise in 47 states. According to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data, the seven-day U.S. average of new daily Covid infections exceeded 150,000 for the first time on Monday. The current record of nearly 155,000 new infections per day marks the 10th consecutive day of growth of about 30% or more in this seven-day trend.

The number of Americans in hospitals is the highest on record with more than 73,000 Covid patients on Monday, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Osterholm stressed the need for a set of national standards to help states tackle the coronavirus pandemic. He explained that part of it meant understanding which metrics actually made a difference. For example, Osterholm said he had not seen data that closing bars at 10 p.m. is more useful than not closing them at all.

“The economy will shut down on its own if we see this uncontrolled transmission,” the infectious disease expert said. “If our health facilities start to go bankrupt, if people start dying in emergency rooms after 10 hours of waiting to get a room, you are going to see people then, at that point, refuse to go into public at all, and that’s what will really have the ultimate impact on the economy. ”

Host Shepard Smith noted measures that have proven to be effective, such as the closure of bars and restaurants in New York in March and the lockdown of Belgium which began on November 2. Osterholm agreed with Smith that the United States was not spreading the virus enough.

“I have been saying for some time that it is not enough to say ‘hide and wash your hands’,” said Osterholm. “At the same time, we want to do what is really going to have an impact, and I think the European experience is very important.”