fox news medical contributor and friend
of fox news at night
dr mark siegel scored an exclusive
interview with the president today
they talked in depth about the nation's
battle against the coronavirus pandemic
and what to expect next what about
testing what's your plans going forward
with testing pool testing or
how are you going to approach it well
i'm going with the experts
i happen to think you know we're doing
more testing than anybody in the world
by far
i think second is india with 12 million
we're going to be at over 50
50 million tests this weekend and
to me it every time you test you find a
case and you know it gets reported in
the news we found more cases if instead
of 50 we did 25
would have half the number of cases so i
personally think it's overrated
but i am totally willing to keep doing
it you know we have so many more tests
than any other country by far and
i the president of mexico came to see me
i said what do you do
and mexico's got some very big problems
i mean they test when somebody goes into
a hospital
they might test a little area but it's
very limited testing and this is true
with most
countries we're spending a lot of money
on massive testing
and i'm okay with it the experts are
saying it's a good thing to do
but we've done 50 million tests and
india pretty big country 1.4 billion
people
they've done uh one-third
of the number of tests that we've done
one-fourth of the number of tests that
we've done
so i'm okay with it if they want to do
it but i again
it makes us look bad but they say it's
good i don't mind looking bad if it's a
good thing
but think of it if instead of 50 million
we did 25 million
we'd have half the number of cases the
cases would be down here would be the
normally headline not for me it wouldn't
be but
for anybody else they'd say cases cut in
half okay but they wouldn't report it
that way
as a father and a grandfather what do
you want to see happen with schools what
will you do
i'd like to see them open and again the
children whether it's immune system i
guess
it's i was watching you one night you
said immune system
whatever it is they're a lot stronger
than we are because it just
doesn't have an impact doesn't have any
almost any impact it's a tiny percentage
of one percent it's like meaning much
much less than one percent
i'd like to see the schools open the
country has to open
you know we did the right thing we
closed it down we saved millions of
lives now we're opening it up
and i think the democrats are actually
doing it largely for political reasons
they think the economy won't be as
strong because we're doing very well
with jobs you saw we broke the record
two months in a row with job
numbers a lot i really believe the
democrats are doing this for a political
reason if you close down california you
know it's a big state you close down
some of these places
it's not going to show watch on november
4th everything will open up
masks there's a difference of opinion
between two
great governors that both support you
governor avid in texas
universal mass policy in florida
governor desantis who i have a great
deal of respect for
is not not putting in that mass policy
certain counties have it
is there a role you will play in talking
to the governors about masks i'm not
talking about a universal mask
on the masks my attitude is that
when i was at the hospital i felt very
comfortable wearing the mask
i was seeing young people that were hurt
very badly
in military situations and
i felt for them not for me i felt for
them
my wearing a mask was a good thing i
felt extremely comfortable
i don't feel comfortable in other
settings when i'm all by myself on a
stage and everybody's way far away i
don't
think it's something that you have to do
or should do
but everyone around me is tested so i'm
not the perfect person to talk about it
but i believe that you should wear it
even if there's a one percent chance it
helps you know
when you look at dr fauci and others and
and this isn't
a knock because this is just if you look
early on
they were all saying don't wear a mask
don't wear a mask
that didn't make total sense to me but
don't wear a mess now they're all saying
wear a mask my attitude is
it probably helps give it a shot because
we have to win this thing
so it's not a question of pride it's not
a question of anything we have to win
this
so when you're in a certain situation i
think you should wear a mask
nursing homes uh big big fiasco uh 40
of the deaths in this country nursing
homes the governor of new york who as
you know
was involved in this whole issue of a
great number of nursing home deaths in
new york is now going around the country
advising people on how to get out of a
hot spot situation where of new york did
really well
what do you think about him blaming the
federal government for what happened in
the new york
nursing homes well he did and he was hit
so hard that he stopped doing that
he was trying to say that he listened to
a guideline because really it was common
sense
we gave them a tremendous facility that
they really didn't use we built a
hospital with 2
800 beds they could have used that that
was clean 100
clean and unfortunately they made and it
was
a mistake and it was a sad mistake
but he's worked very hard i mean in all
fairness to governor cuomo he's worked
very hard we've gotten along
very well i think overall he's actually
said we've done an outstanding job he
actually said
he's done a phenomenal job from the
federal government standpoint so we
we moved the ship in we had a lot of
room there wasn't utilized like it could
have been and we
had the javits convention center where
we had 2
800 beds built and that wasn't used or
certainly not very much it would have
been great in retrospect
if they would have used that for some of
these patients
moving infected people back in certainly
was not
the answer we're very very careful all
over the country i mean you wouldn't
even have to be every governor watched
that and they're all
i think nursing homes right now are very
heavily protected
they have to be but they're very heavily
protected
dr burks is a big advisor of yours that
isn't getting enough attention of course
everyone gets slammed but
i'm disturbed about that because she's a
woman can you talk to me about her role
so i think she's one of the finest
people i've ever met
in the world of medicine medical you
know she
is responsible for all of the incredible
work that's taken place on aids in
africa
millions of people are alive right now
because of her she's an
unbelievable woman a woman of tremendous
substance and style frankly she has an
amazing style
she walks into the room and she can take
a scarf and do 15 things with it and
she is really somebody that and that's
the least important thing
she is a brilliant woman she's a great
woman
she gets some very unfair treatment in
my opinion
i read one story in the new york times
which is fake news largely
but they want to knock her i think they
knock her because she probably is
on my side but she is a fantastic woman
who's done a fantastic job
long before this came up she was she was
involved and things
you have to look at her background her
background is incredible
she's a brilliant woman who's a fine
fine person
final question um this has been very
over politicized the virus very
disappointing to me as a physician
can you talk to me about that and
lessons you have learned
that you would take into the second term
in fighting covet 19.
it's highly political and the democrats
are using it
for political reasons and political
purposes
and it shouldn't be this should be a
team effort but regardless
to a certain extent it is what it is
it's going to burn out
but we're going to have vaccines we're
going to have therapeutics
some of the therapeutics that we already
have are really working well the
remdessevier the hard part is getting so
much of it
uh the steroid work and i mean i must
tell you you know some of
some of the things that are happening
are incredible they're saving a lot of
lives
but we're going to have in a short
period of time we're going to have some
really good therapeutics we're also
going to have some really good
vaccines