US President Donald Trump, has retweeted a tweet with the hashtag #firefauci after Dr Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases and head of White House response team to Coronavirus said that more lives could have been saved if Donald Trump locked down the nation’s borders sooner and closed the economy sooner.
According to Fauci, the nation’s top immunologist, ”There was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then,’ Fauci said and even though Trump put out guidelines for social distancing and locked down US in mid-March, Trump knew about virus threat long before he shut down the US after being warned by him
‘Obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier you could’ve saved lives, obviously,’ Fauci told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning.
‘No-one is going to deny that,’ he continued, but added ‘there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then’.
Reports indicate that intelligence officials told the White House that there was a virus threat coming from China as early as November and Fauci revealed he advised the president early on.
‘You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint,’ Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper. ‘We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it’s not.’
‘But it is what it is,’ he continued. ‘We are where we are right now.’
On Sunday night, Trump took a dig at Fauci by retweeting #FireFauci after seeing Fauci’s statements. The president not only retweeted the hashtag, but he added his own comment: ‘Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up’
Trump then retweeted a post from former congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine who tweeted: ‘Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci.”
Trump also blasted the New York Times for an article they published on Saturday blaming the president for his late response.
‘The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the “paper” itself. I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so,’ Trump tweeted.
The president then wrote: ”@SecAzar told me nothing until later, and Peter Navarro memo was same as Ban (see his statements). Fake News!’ the president added.
The US now has the highest death toll from the virus than anywhere in the world with over 560,000 cases and over 22,000 deaths as at Sunday.
