Fox News doctor finds flaw with Trump's plan to hold RNC amid pandemic
Fox News medical contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier on Monday called out President Donald Trump’s plan to pack the upcoming Republican National Convention with up to 50,000 people, during the coronavirus pandemic, as “not smart.”
Trump had earlier in the day threatened to move the convention in August from Charlotte, North Carolina, if the state’s Democratic governor did not allow “full attendance.” “If not, we will be reluctantly forced to find, with all of the jobs and economic development it brings, another Republican National Convention site,” tweeted Trump.
Saphier, appearing on the conservative network’s “Outnumbered” show,” acknowledged “we’re talking about several months from now” but noted how North Carolina on Sunday reported its “highest single-day increase to date” in cases of the virus that has now killed almost 100,000 people nationwide.
“They’re still seeing rising cases and if they’re following that White House blueprint that was put forth by the experts, then they’re not ready to say that they’re going to be able to accommodate 50,000 people in indoor settings come end of August,” she explained.
Saphier, the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New Jersey, warned “we can’t just go back to the business of usual” of packing people in “like a herd of cows” and potentially spreading the virus, pointing out how it could have serious repercussions for schools.
“If they have this massive rise of cases just at the end of August, then all of a sudden the fall school year is going to be completely disrupted,” she said. “If our goal is to try and get children back to school, that’s not smart. But moving it somewhere else isn’t necessarily the right answer either.”
“The bottom line is putting a lot of people in a small area is definitely not good for us right now,” Saphier added. “Not for our long term goal of COVID-19.”
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