COVID Update May 6: Like many countries we picked a strategy to beat COVID-19. We just decided not to stick to it. 1/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020

#StayHome was a first step to flatten the curve. We reduced the infection rate likely from a number between 2 and 3 to closer to 1.

Given exponential math & limited supplies & resources, this likely saved 10s if not 100s of thousands of lives. 3/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020

A new kind of lazy thinking has made its way into the intellectual and kind-of anti-intellectual dialogue. (I’ve had 4 different news anchors ask me to respond to how @ChrisChristie thinks we should approach pandemic response.)5/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020

They want a start a food fight of hardened realists who can tolerate death to “get our country back” & the “public health mafia” who are willing to kill the economy for the sake of a few people who will die soon anyway.7/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020

There are is a major fallacy here. There is no plan by Chris Christie or otherwise to bring the economy back without addressing our public health crisis. 9/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020

This may build into a big food fight to preoccupy & entertain us with something besides dealing with the actual virus. But I don’t need to be invited to debate opportunities on the topic.11/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020

Rather than wait, Trump grew impatient. He wants life to go back to the way it was before the pandemic. He wants the economy growing.

I don’t know how to explain it to him but let me try.13/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020

Trump acts like keeping Americans safe is a bridge too far. 16/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020

Let’s take a look.

*Hong Kong— oh, but they’re an island. Yes. So is Manhattan. Contagion on a dense island can be a disaster.
*New Zealand— oh, but they’re remote. Well they had a color coded warning system like we announced. But they stuck with it.18/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020

Point is— this can be done. Not perfectly. Not without loss of life. Not with a perfect economy but with testing & tracing & masks, it’s a strategy if you can stick to it. 20/

— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) May 6, 2020