Meet the Press/NBC
- A US nationwide lockdown lasting four to six weeks would help control the virus and revive the US economy, Dr. Michael Osterholm, a COVID-19 advisor to President-elect Joe Biden, said Wednesday.
- Osterholm told Yahoo Finance that the US had a “big pool of money” that could support the economy during lockdown until a vaccine is publicly available.
- “We could really watch ourselves cruising into the vaccine availability in the first and second quarter of next year while bringing back the economy long before that,” Osterholm said.
- Osterholm was appointed to Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board Monday, along with 12 other prominent health experts.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, an influential COVID-19 advisor to President-elect Joe Biden, on Wednesday called for a four- to six-week nationwide lockdown to help drive down infection numbers.
Osterholm, part of Biden’s 13-person COVID-19 advisory panel announced Monday, told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday that the US had a “big pool of money” to help pay for people’s lost wages and get the economy back on track during a lockdown while a vaccine was being rolled out.
Osterholm said a national lockdown would drive the number of new cases down, “like they did in New Zealand and Australia.”
“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” he said. “If we did that, then we could lock down for four to six weeks.”
He added: “We could really watch ourselves cruising into the vaccine availability in the first and second quarter of next year while bringing back the economy long before that.”
Over the last seven days, the US has recorded an average of more than 112,000 daily cases. Cases reached an all-time peak of more than 132,000 on Friday.
In response, some states, including Wisconsin, Nevada, and New York, have imposed new restrictions. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned Wednesday that the city was on its “last chance” to stop a second wave, and said that bars, restaurants, and gyms must close by 10 p.m..
The US could see 1 million daily coronavirus cases by the end of 2020, according to a new report from Pantheon Macroeconomics released Wednesday.
In the interview, Osterholm, a director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, echoed the message he made to CNBC on Monday about the US entering “COVID hell.”
He told Yahoo Finance: “I think that the message is: How do we get through this? We need FDR moments right now. We need fireside chats. We need somebody to tell America, ‘This is what in the hell is going to happen.'”
Osterholm was appointed to Biden’s 13-member COVID-19 advisory board Monday, along with other leading health experts such as David Kessler, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, and Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon general.
Biden said in a statement that the board “will help shape my approach” to managing the pandemic.
The coronavirus has killed more than 242,000 people in the US, and infected more than 10.5 million. On Sunday, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide passed 50 million.
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