Dr. Ben Carson appeared on Fox News Monday afternoon to weigh in on the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically the coronavirus testing squeeze, of which he said, “Maybe that’s not a bad thing.”
At issue was the fact the Biden administration has yet to finalize the contracts that would provide 500 million free Covid tests to Americans who want them.
“People are waiting for tests,” host Martha MacCallum said. “Do you think those tests are gonna arrive in time to serve that need?”
“Well, it’s quite clear the tests are not gonna arrive in time,” said the former Trump cabinet secretary. “Maybe that’s not a bad thing because, you know, the more tests you have, the more positive people you’re gonna have. And if you don’t have a good plan for what you’re gonna do with those positive people, it adds more to the confusion.”
Carson said the virus is “getting weaker and more contagious” and predicted it would spread far and wide among society.
“What are we going to do about that?” he said. “Are we going to be afraid of it? Are we going to hunker down and hide from it? Or are we gonna use the knowledge that we have in order to be able to live effectively with it? You know, we have some very effective therapeutics. We need to be concentrating on early therapy and making it available for people.”
MacCallum pressed Carson on his remarks about testing.
“I just wanna go back and ask you,” she began. “So are you suggesting that people shouldn’t test and they shouldn’t–it doesn’t matter if they know they’re positive or not by the first comment you made there?”
Carson then offered a more nuanced explanation:
Well, I’m saying that we need to be more measured and who we’re testing. To just go out widely and test everybody when you have something that is spreading this first and you don’t have a plan to deal with it, all you’re doing is adding to the confusion. Yes, certainly people who are at risk – those are the people we should be saving the tests for. And people who have to interface with a lot of people who perhaps have high risk – those are people who should be tested. Let’s not be just indiscriminately testing people and then throwing up our hands when we have so many people who are positive and not knowing what to do with them.
MacCallum seemed to agree.
“Yeah, it would be great if you could apply to receive a test based on the people that you are exposing yourself to,” she said.
Watch above via Fox News.
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