‘It’s going to backfire’: Fauci warns against reopening too quickly

As the rate of new infections and deaths from the coronavirus slowed in parts of the country Monday, some local governments began to ease stay-at-home restrictions, while others pleaded with residents to stay put amid scattered protests in support of reopenings.

In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp outlined an aggressive reopening plan, saying gyms, salons, bowling alleys and some other indoor businesses can reopen Friday with social distancing plans in place. Kemp also said he will release guidelines this week that will let restaurants — but not bars or clubs — open April 27.

“I don’t give a damn about politics now,” said Kemp, a Republican. The governor said he was concerned about residents “going broke worried about whether they can feed their children and make the mortgage payment.”

A model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington showed Georgia may have reached its peak of the pandemic in early April. But the state, where at least 733 people have died, lags behind others in its testing capabilities.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned Americans on Monday against trying too quickly to return to normal.

“It’s going to backfire,” Fauci said in an interview on “Good Morning America.” “That’s the problem.”

Texas state parks reopened, as did beaches in South Carolina, both with physical distancing rules in place.

But in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned Monday that although the state appears to be moving past the worst of the covid-19 pandemic, the possibility of “horrifically high” death rates remains if restrictions ease too fast.

In New York City, the worst-hit place in the country, Mayor Bill de Blasio said health care workers could run out of surgical gowns by next week. Underlining the continued crisis, the mayor canceled permits for major public events in June, which included New York’s LGBTQ Pride March and Puerto Rican Day Parade.

Statewide in New York, officials reported 478 people died Sunday of covid-19. That’s a drop from a week ago, when the disease killed close to 800 people each day. Hospitalizations have declined in the state.

The mood was less somber elsewhere.

American flag-waving demonstrators gathered Monday in Harrisburg, with signs that included the phrases “The media is the virus” and “Jesus is my vaccine,” and another small group stood with similar messages outside the North Dakota Capitol in Bismarck.

Speaking on Fox News on Monday, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway echoed President Trump’s support of the protest movements.

Conway said some state governors, including Michigan’s, have “physically distanced from common sense” in placing restrictions. By example, she cited the state shutting down gardening stores but allowing marijuana dispensaries to operate. “You can basically smoke your grass but not cut your grass. This makes no sense to many people,” she said.

Trump has pushed for states to ease restrictions and reopen, and promised over the weekend to rapidly ramp up the testing needed to ensure it is safe to do so.

On Sunday, he said at a White House briefing the country will “have so many swabs you won’t know what to do with,” referring to nasal coronavirus testing kits. Vice President Mike Pence said states could double the 150,000 tests per day they are conducting.

But health experts and governors, including some Republicans, have warned much higher testing capacity is needed to quickly detect new outbreaks once economic activity resumes. One Democrat, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, has called Trump’s views on reopening “delusional.”

In his Monday interview, Fauci acknowledged the economic havoc efforts to contain the virus have caused.

“The message is that clearly this is something that is hurting, from the standpoint of economics and the standpoint of things that have nothing to do with the virus,” he said.

The U.S. still lags behind other nations in coronavirus testing even as it leads the world in number of infections and deaths from covid-19.

Nearly 41,000 people have died.

Some local health clinics around the nation have put faith in the dozens of new kinds of antibody tests that promise to determine if patients have already recovered from the virus without showing symptoms. But nearly all of those tests remain unapproved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Fauci warned Monday against relying on them.

“The assumption that, with the tests that are out there, if you have an antibody positivity, you are good to go — unless that test has been validated, and you can show there’s a correlation between the antibody and protection, it is an assumption to say that this is something that we can work with,” he said.

“We still have a way to go.”