Azar backed up Donald Trump’s insistence that the nation will reopen with or without a vaccine, saying “not everything depends on a vaccine.”
Azar claimed: “We're committed to delivering a vaccine, we'll put the full power of the US government and our private sector towards getting a vaccine… but that's one of a multi-factorial response program.”
Azar blames coronavirus rates on comorbidities, noting that the American population has “significant unhealthy comorbidities” that make “many individuals” in communities, specifying, “African American and minority communities particularly at risk.”
Tapper said he wanted to give Azar a moment to “clear it up,” because it sounded like he was saying “the reason there are so many dead Americans is because we’re unhealthier than the rest of the world?”
This is perhaps a veiled reference to Donald Trump’s latest claim that it’s important to get the economy back up and running because isolation may cause mental health struggles.
