Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, is weighing in on whether the United States will hold a traditional inauguration in Washington, D.C., amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Host of CBS’s “Face the Nation” Margaret Brennan noted there have been several celebratory gatherings after President-elect Joe Biden (D) won the election.
She pointed out some gatherings consisted of Americans wearing masks while some did not.
Brennan asked Gottlieb whether the nation will be able to have an inauguration with the typical celebrations in January.
“I don’t think we will. I don’t think we’re going to be able to bring large crowds together for an inauguration. We’re going to be right in the thick of probably the worst point of this epidemic wave that we’re going through right now,” Gottlieb said.
He added, “The Biden campaign, the Biden team, have shown that they’re willing to forgo the usual trappings of running for office so that they don’t expose people unnecessarily. I suspect they’re going to take a similar approach to how they handle the inauguration. I don’t know what that’s going to look like, but we’re not going to be able to bring together tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people on the lawn in Washington for a typical inauguration.”
Watch his comments below:
#INAUGURATION 2021: Will the U.S. have a traditional inauguration that brings together hundreds of thousands of people on the National Mall?
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) November 8, 2020
“I don’t think we will,” @ScottGottliebMD tells @margbrennan, says we'll be in the "thick of the worst point" of the #COVID19 epidemic pic.twitter.com/hwGfq6ouPc
The presidential inauguration is scheduled to be held on January 20, 2021.
On Friday, the number of COVID-19 infections exceeded 129,000, as IJR previously reported.
This marked the third consecutive day of more than 100,000 confirmed cases.
In this month alone, 10 states have reported a record number of death increases daily, including Arkansas, Idaho, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Since the onset of the pandemic, more than 10,005,300 Americans have been infected and at least 237,800 have died.
