NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins: States Jumped Over Hoops, Didn’t Pay Much Attention to CDC Recommendations About Reopening

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, rather bluntly told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press Sunday morning

Todd opened by bluntly asking, “Why are we doing so poorly compared to the rest of the industrialized world in combatting this virus?”

Collins said that “we basically did a good job in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut with that terrible crisis that happened and took many lives — which we should never pass by without saying what a terrible tragedy that has been — and basically steps have been put in place, and if you see what’s happening in those areas, they came down very close to zero.”

“Meanwhile, the rest of the country — perhaps imagining this was just a New York problem—  kind of went about their business,” Collins continued, “didn’t pay that much attention to CDC’s recommendations about the phases necessary to open up safely, and jumped over some of those hoops, and people started congregating and not wearing masks and feeling like it’s over and maybe summer it’ll all go away and here we are.”

He said he’s troubled about the surge in cases and hospitalizations across the country.

You can watch above, via NBC.