and the American people deserve some straight answers

on the coronavirus.

-Four words describe the administration's response

to the coronavirus --

towering and dangerous incompetence.

[women speaking Chinese] -In any of these kinds of situations --

we saw it with Ebola, we saw it with SARS --

the government is, to a certain extent,

improvising its response.

Now, that said, it's not a good look

when your CDC person comes out

and says one thing and then Larry Kudlow,

the President's advisor, comes out and says, you know,

"Aw, well, I wouldn't worry too much.

We've got this thing contained."

-We have contained this -- I won't say airtight,

but pretty close to airtight.

We've done a good job in the United States.

Hats off to our public-health people.

-The President himself has said, "You know,

we have this thing contained.

We're gonna have a vaccine real soon."

And then the scientific people are saying,

"Well, actually, that's not entirely true.

You know, we're not gonna have a vaccine for

about a year, if we're lucky."

-The vaccine is coming along well,

and in speaking to the doctors, we think this is something that

we can develop fairly rapidly a vaccine for the future.

-In order to get a vaccine

that's practically deployable for people to use,

it's gonna be at least a year to a year and a half at best.

-I think the best scientists that the government has on this

are saying to prepare for a certain level

of spread in the United States.

We don't know what that's going to look like yet.

We don't know how many people will get severe illnesses

as opposed to the mild version,

which is the predominant version.

One of the big problems right now is we don't know

how much is here

because our testing in the United States is not working.

There's probably been some spread in the United States

as we sit here,

and we just don't know what it is.

So I think the science and the scientific leaders

are telling us to be ready for that,

that that is going to happen most likely,

almost certainly going to happen.

How severe will it be? How many people will die?

How many people will just get sick?

We don't know that yet.