Politics

‘We’ve Certainly Flattened The Economy’: Brit Hume Weighs In On Coronavirus Response

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Brit Hume weighed in Tuesday on the response to coronavirus, saying that whether or not Americans had “flattened the curve,” they had “certainly flattened the economy.”

The Fox News senior political analyst joined Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson to discuss the most recent developments and possible next steps with regard to reevaluating the projection models and getting millions of Americans back to work. (RELATED: ‘I Have Traces Of This Myself’: Brit Hume Says It’s Clear That Biden Is Slipping)

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Carlson began by saying, “I respect the public health authorities. I know models are often wrong, they are guidelines. I understand all of that but when the model is as wrong as this one has been, it means the rest of us are owed a clear explanation without finger-pointing and browbeating and we are not getting one. Does that bother you?”

Hume said that yes, he was bothered, primarily because “the models were the basis for these decisions that have been made, these drastic restrictions that we have placed on ourselves as a country to combat the coronavirus. And we may or may not have flattened the curve, but we’ve certainly flattened the economy.”

Hume went on to note that, so far, some ten million people have lost their jobs and more layoffs appear to be inevitable if the restrictions don’t let up in the near future.

“There are costs associated with that in terms of human suffering and anxiety and stress, all of which are probably not the responsibility of the epidemiologist, but they are the responsibility of the public policy makers who have been relying on these expert doctors who I think have done the best they can,” Hume added.

The fact that the projection models were so far off, Hume continued, raised the question as to whether the restrictions were the right call and the reason the U.S. avoided the predicted numbers. “Is it really true that the reason that we are beginning to think we may have turned the corner on this because we all did with the doctor said we should do or is it because the disease turned out not to be quite as dangerous as we thought?” Hume asked. “And we are going to be debating that for a long time.”