Following a report from CNN Dr. Sanjay Guputa that the U.S. is woefully unprepared to handle a massive outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, "New Day" host John Berman relayed that staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have become "demoralized" by the White House response that won't allow them to do their jobs.
The concerned Gupta began by describing problems that will soon become apparent by pointing out, "One is that we may not have enough personal protective gear for our health care workers, and then if they're potentially exposed, they're out of the system. they really can't take care of patients for a while. Who's going to backstop that? Two is this idea of surge capacity. You know, look, we've got about a million hospital beds in the united states. We don't run a hospital system in the United States that is built on redundancy, we have a lot of extra redundancy built into it -- so what happens to these patients?"
"I've been reporting on this for some time talking to doctors like [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head] Dr. Fauci and other doctors and we're now being told that, you know, they can't talk to us anymore unless they get approval from, you know, the vice president essentially on this," Gupta continued. "Which is hard to believe that simple information can't come from the people who have the best information right now without all these hoops they got to jump through. So another problem, you know, in terms of actually coordinating a response and clear communication. "
"I have to say I've heard from friends that I had within the health community and the CDC who say it's demoralizing the mixed messages that are coming from the top and front line health care workers," host Berman offered. "They're working their butts off right now and they're not hearing at the top what they think needs to be said."
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