U.S. Rep. Donna Shalala Reacts to Senate Hearing

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: What was your take from that Senate hearing? Do you think the questions elicited the kind of answers that are going to clarify the reopening instructions for the American people?

REP. DONNA SHALALA (D-FL): Well, Dr. Fauci has given the same message. He’s been consistent from the beginning, reopen too soon, not having in place the testing, the strategic follow-up as well as the isolation, not having a disciplined strategy and you’re going to get spikes. You know, the message is the same, what happens in London is not going to stay in London. What happens in New York is not going to stay in New York. And we have to have a coordinated national strategy. And what Tony was basically saying to us is, if you open too soon, if you have not starved this virus, so that your data goes down for 14 days, you’re going to be in real trouble. The worse thing that can happen to all of us is after staying in for three months, we have to do it again and again because we haven’t done the right things and taken the scientists’ advice to heart.

AMANPOUR: So, we know that there have been, you know, guidebooks from President Trump himself about the steps that need to happen. There’s been the guidebook from the CDC, which seems to have been shelved because apparently didn’t give enough rights to the states to determine their own way forward. What is the danger of — or is there a danger in your view of those sort of centralized guidebooks not being followed or is it better for each area to take sensible decisions based on how they’re doing?

SHALALA: I think it has to be a combination of the both because the states are so different and different parts of the states are different. So, the national government has to set the scientific standards. That’s what the CDC has already done, though they were pretty minimal. No state has met those minimum standards. And the idea that they have plans to open up without actually having starved this virus down to the lowest point they possibly could is very dangerous to the country. So, I think there’s a federal role, a very clear federal role, to set the standards. I also think the federal government has to finance much of this because the states certainly can’t afford it. They can’t afford all of the testing we’re requiring. They can’t afford to hire all of the people that need to follow up on infections and they can’t — they certainly can’t afford the loss to their budgets,