Dr. Ben Carson Says Don’t Wait ‘Until Every Vestige Of The Virus Is Gone’ To Reopen America

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson is confident the American economy will return to normal, and believes that the U.S. shouldn’t wait “until every vestige of the virus is gone” to reopen the economy.

Speaking with Fox News’ Sandra Smith, Carson was also hopeful about the millions of jobs lost due to the coronavirus crisis, believing, “They won’t come back immediately, but they will spring back a lot faster than one might imagine.”

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Carson is Optimistic

Smith asked, “Mr. Secretary, if you could, just give us your idea and how are you advising the president on the best way to open the economy safely?”

“Well, what we have to recognize is that we have going into this an incredibly strong economy,” Carson replied. “And things were going very well. The fundamentals, the underlying structure of our economy is very solid and very strong.”

“So what we want to do is we want to maintain that economy, bridge the gap, and that means that you are going to have to infuse some significant federal funds,” he continued. “But we want to keep things going so that once the virus problem has been eliminated, we can go back.”

 

‘It doesn’t mean that we have to wait until every vestige of the virus is gone’

What Dr. Carson said next is something many Americans have likely been eager to hear.

“And it doesn’t mean that we have to wait until every vestige of the virus is gone,” he insisted. “You know, common sense would dictate that if we wait until everything is gone our economy will be gone, also.”

“So we have to recognize that obviously, you know, there are risks, benefits and risks in everything and we have to weigh those things,” Carson said. “That’s what a task force does. We look at all the different variables; we look at medical variables; we look at social variables, economic variables; and we try to give the president the kind of advice that would be beneficial in maintaining people’s health but also in maintaining their lifestyle.”

 

Dr. Carson says jobs might come back ‘a lot faster than one might imagine’

Smith brought up millions of jobs that have been lost in the U.S. due to the response to COVID-19, asking the HUD Secretary if he thought the jobs would return, and if so, would it be sooner or later?

“They won’t come back immediately, but they will spring back a lot faster than one might imagine,” Carson said. “You know, the last time we had a severe economic downturn back in 2008, that was on the back of a very weak economy. This is on the back of a very strong economy and it wasn’t caused by economic factors it was caused by a virus which will go away. This too will pass.”

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Carson went on, “So what we’re talking about here is just maintaining the strong financial infrastructure and economic infrastructure that already exists. And we can do that. It doesn’t matter if it’s five million or ten million or 15 million; we’re going to gradually them all back to work but we have to do it intelligently.”

“We’ve learned things about this virus,” Carson said. “We’ve learned things about its transmission. We will incorporate those things into the action plan for getting back to work.”