Newt Gingrich on Fox and Friends | Fox News Channel | April 6, 2020

Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich appeared on the Fox and Friends on Fox News on April 6, 2020

Newt Gingrich
Fox and Friends
04/06/2020

NEWT:

It is mildly encouraging that the number of cases in Italy does seem to be plateauing. And I think it’s the first really positive sign we have had since this pandemic started.

NEWT:

They don't yet. And, frankly, President Trump's pledge of help was very well received here. We have already seen, for example, that Samaritan’s Purse launched an entire hospital in northern Italy with some 60 doctors and nurses and volunteers and they have been busy ever since they arrived. I think the Italians need the help. This is a country with a weak economy, it’s now pretty shattered because 14 percent of the economy was tourism and currently it is zero. At the same time, and this is going to be true all over the world. We are going to have to prepare for a second wave, that means a lot more investment in testing equipment. A lot more investing in the right therapies. And frankly, I think, a more methodical approach to this that looks at individuals not just huge populations. Places like Sweden, which are focused on individuals, or Singapore, or South Korea have done a much better job with much less economic damage. So that's got to be part of our phase 2 as we move into that phase and hopefully with the news from New York we may actually be peaking in New York as well as in Italy.

NEWT:

Calista and I have had that experience here. We’ve been under lock down. The Italians allowed this to get away from them and have had to go to very strong regime to try to get it under control. They were affected in part because they are about 100,000 Chinese in northern Italy. And they had a direct flight three times a week to Wuhan. Which they didn't cut off. Unlike President Trump they allowed that flight to continue for several weeks after the epidemic started. So, we have seen here in Italy and frankly as the Ambassador of the Vatican it was very sobering for Calista to watch the pope in an empty St. Peters on one of the most important days in the Christian religion, on Palm Sunday. But that's reality right now. We have to focus on defeating the virus. And I think that also means preparing now for a potential second wave. Making sure we continue to manufacture testing equipment, making sure we continue to develop better therapies. Don't just wait around for a vaccine. Let’s see if we can’t just therapeutically get it so people don’t get particularly sick. But we have to assume there could be a second wave coming. Dr. Fauci talked about this. My answer to that is think through how you can have a healthy economy by preparing in advance to test and isolate people so if there is a second wave, we can handle it with much less effort than we handled this shocking first wave.

NEWT:

Part of it is starting as soon as we can to get small businesses back being being active, doing things. I will say I think that the small business program that they have developed is a very important bridge. But you have think of it as a bridge. It’s a bridge back to helping small businesses develop the right approaches. I happened to be in Korea when this started. And they immediately went for example to testing the temperature of every person walking into a restaurant or walking into a hotel. They were very, very vigorous about trying to identify who might be carrying it. And work from that standpoint back. The result was they really were on top of this at the very beginning. It's something I'm actually producing a paper with Claire Christensen outlining the experience in East Asia. We can do better than we have done. This is a transition period. This was a great shock to us. But now we need to roll up our sleeves. And one of the keys to that is helping small businesses not only with a bridge loan that becomes a grant if they keep their employees, but also thinking through by the middle of summer how we get people back to work, get restaurants open and get people in a position where they can be with each other without fear.