“Americans are individuals, and if we are given the right information, and if not confused by many other conspiracy theories, we are able to figure out what to do,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
“If we want to see this current increase, and it’s a real increase, turn around,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, “all Americans must recognize that it is up to us.”
Collins encouraged wearing a mask when he was away from home, distancing himself socially, not meeting in large groups, especially indoors, and washing his hands.
“We can change this and we don’t have to wait for some kind of serious high-level edict to say it,” Collins said. “This makes common sense at this point, it should be something we all do.”
Collins said a good job was done in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, and that the steps implemented meant those areas were reduced to almost zero.
“Meanwhile, the rest of this country, perhaps imagining that this was just a New York problem, took care of their business, really didn’t pay much attention to CDC’s recommendations on the steps needed to open up safely and jumped on some of those hoops, ”Collins said.
People began to congregate, without wearing masks and “feeling that it was over and maybe all summer will go away.”
Collins said that we now have not only 70,000 cases almost every day, but a rather worrying number of hospitalizations, in his view, which are almost as high as in April.
“We really have to double here,” said Collins. “Americans are good enough to deal with a crisis, we have one now, let’s see what we can do together.”
.
