Q Mr. President, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Q Mr. President —
Q You are already talked. Mr. President, the other day, you said that you were not responsible for the testing shortfall. A very simple question: Does the buck stop with you? And on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your response to this crisis?
THE PRESIDENT: I’d rate it a 10. I think we’ve done a great job. And it started with the fact that we kept a very highly infected country — despite all of the — even the professionals saying, “No, it’s too early to do that.” We were very, very, early with respect to China. And we would have a whole different situation in this country if we didn’t do that.
I would rate it a very, very — I would rate ourselves and the professionals — I think the professionals have done a fantastic job.
As far as the testing — you heard the Admiral — I think the testing that we’ve done, we really took over an obsolete system or, put it maybe in a different way, a system that wasn’t meant to do anything like this — we took it over. And we’re doing something that’s never been done in this country. And I think that we are doing very well.
We took the system, we worked with the system we had, and we broke down the system, purposely. We broke it down in order to do what we’re doing now. And within a short period of time — and even now — we’re testing tremendous numbers of people. And ultimately, you’re saying it will be what? It will be up to — how many people will be — we’ll be able to test?
ADMIRAL GIROIR: We certainly expect, with the high-throughput testing, that that’s no longer a barrier. The barrier is actually doing the test on a person. And I’m sure, as the President will — would inform you, in order to do the test, a healthcare provider needs to dress in full personal protective equipment. Full personal protective equipment. And there’s a swab that’s put in the back of the nose, all the way to the back of the throat — it’s called a nasal pharyngeal swab — which is then put in media.
The next person who has to get tested — that healthcare provider has to change all the personal protective equipment. When you put that in, it’s highly likely a person coughs or sneezes, so you’re at risk.
So that’s what we’re trying to fix now by the mobile platforms, by all the things we’re doing, is to enable sort of high-throughput of this swabbing. And we’re doing some technological things too that might be breakthroughs to make it much — much faster.
But we certainly expect that, from thousands of people per day, we will — we will be at the tens of thousands of people per day, this week, according to those who are (inaudible).
Q Does the buck stop with you, Mr. President? Does the Buck stop with you?
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, normally. But I think when you hear the — you know, this has never been done before in this country. If you look back — you know, take a look at some of the things that took place in ‘09 or ’11, or whatever it may have been. They never did — nobody has ever done anything like what we’re doing.
Now, I will also say — Admiral, I think we can say that we’re also getting this ready for the future so that when we have a future problem — if and when, and hopefully we don’t have anything like this — but if there is, we’re going to be very — we’re going to be starting off from a much higher plateau. Because we were at a very, very low base.
We had a system that was not meant for this. It was a smaller system. It was meant for a much different purpose. And for that purpose, it was fine, but not for this purpose. So we broke down the system, and now we have something that’s going to be — and is — very special, and is ready for future problems. And I think we can say that very strongly.
Yeah. Go ahead, please.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. How close are you to shutting down America’s northern border with Canada? And could you also speak to the fact about the elections that are supposed to be taking place tomorrow? Is it your advice that those states postpone those elections?
