Trump's Task Force Still Won't Call For A National Stay-At-Home Order

The White House coronavirus task force still wont call for a national stay-at-home order, despite calls from medical professionals and researchers to do so to curb the spread of the virus in places.

As Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx explained during Tuesday nights task force update that the total number of deaths in the U.S. could rise to 100,000 to 240,000, President Donald Trump avoided explaining why the administration hasnt imposed a stay-at-home order yet.

Instead, Trump talked about how the death toll would have reached up to 2 million people if he had done nothing at all.

What wouldve happened if we did nothing? Because there was a group that said, Lets just ride it out, the president said. What wouldve happened? That number comes in at 1.5 to 1.6 million, up to 2.2 ... 2.2 million people would have died.

You would have seen people dying on airplanes, he added. You wouldve seen people dying in hotel lobbies. Youd be seeing death all over.

Earlier in the pandemic, Trump dismissed the severity of the virus and compared it to the flu. On March 9, Trump compared numbers of people who died of the flu in 2019 to the number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths at that time.

On Tuesday, as the national death toll from the virus skyrocketed to 3,700, the president admitted that the coronavirus outbreak was worse than the flu.

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

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So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020

Public health experts have warned that the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to worsen if the Trump administration does not take strict action and order all Americans to stay at home.

According to a tally kept by The Washington Post , governors in more than a dozen states are refusing to issue their own statewide orders, even as numbers of COVID-19 cases grow exponentially in their areas.

Florida, for example, had more than 5,000 cases as of Tuesday. However, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) waited until Wednesday to expand stay-at-home orders from four counties in South Florida to the rest of the state. DeSantis said at his own news conference Tuesday that he was waiting for the White House task force to recommend that to him first.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) has suggested that her residents stay at home as much as possible, but she did not issue a statewide order.

Despite governors looking to the White House for guidance, Vice President Mike Pence , who is leading the task force, still said Tuesday that the administration was deferring any type of mitigation measures to state and local health authorities.

JUST NOW Gov. Ron DeSantis says the White House task force hasn't told him to issue a statewide stay-at-home-order: \"The task force is not recommending this. If they do, thats something that would carry a lot of weight with me.\"

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JUST NOW Gov. Ron DeSantis says the White House task force hasn't told him to issue a statewide stay-at-home-order: "The task force is not recommending this. If they do, thats something that would carry a lot of weight with me."
Samantha-Jo Roth (@SamanthaJoRoth) March 31, 2020

During the White House news conference, Birx said that states, such as California and Washington, who had issued mitigation orders very early on in their outbreaks had been able to slow the outbreak dramatically.

Those states really talked to their communities and decided to mitigate before they started seeing this number of cases, Birx said.

Now we know that makes a big difference, she added. If you wait til you see it, its too late.

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