Excerpts
“This is a problem that everybody’s been talking about for a week, but I don’t think just talking about what was done wrong yesterday or last week or last year is really that helpful in the discussion. Governor Cuomo is the vice chairman of the National Governors Association; I’m the chairman. I can tell you that we’ve been talking with and meeting with all of the governors, with the vice president, occasionally with the president, with all of the senior team, almost every single day, talking about the needs. And I believe we pushed for action, and we are getting some progress. Now, it’s not nearly enough. It’s not fast enough. We’re way behind the curve…We’re trying to figure out what we can do to move forward. And they are making progress. It’s not fast enough. But on all of those things, on respirators, on PPEs, on the masks, on the tests, we’re ramping up. New York has about half of the aid of the rest of the country. They’re focusing on the three states that have the worst problem right now, and New York is one of them. But they’re really trying to push things out to all the states, but of course it’s not enough and failures were made and things that should have happened sooner. But I just want to focus on where we go from here, because our job is to save the citizens. We had another death here in Maryland last night. We just hit over 500 in the Washington region. And instead of just talking about what didn’t get done, I just want to get things done.”
“We’re all taking actions and trying to work together, but yeah, the social distancing is not being enforced and it’s a little crazy to see the kind of crowds at the cherry blossoms. I mean, people have to listen. Those people that are out there, you are endangering not only yourselves but your fellow citizens by not listening to these warnings. We’ve been getting pretty tough out here in Maryland on folks, limiting people to groups of ten. We were chastising all these spring breakers that came back from partying in Florida and we told them they need to self-quarantine for 14 days, otherwise they’re risking the lives of their parents and their grandparents and their friends. Because this no longer is just about older people. … We had a 10-month-old, a 5-year-old who have gotten this disease. So people are kidding themselves if they think they should just go on spring break or enjoy being out there, just as business as normal. We’ve gotta get people off the streets and out of these crowds. It’s absolutely essential.”
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Governor Hogan on Meet The Press Discussing Coronavirus Actions
“Look, nobody knows where the end of this is or when the spikes are going to happen, but progress is going to be if we can somehow bend this curve downward and start to stop that spike that’s going so we don’t overload the health care system…look, it’s very disconcerting. People’s lives are disrupted. It’s scary, and I understand people out there are concerned about when is it going to look better. Just know that people all over the place are working as hard as they possibly can to fight this hidden enemy, and it’s going to take all of us, not only the local government, the cities like the mayor and the state governments, all the governors and the federal government, but it takes every one of our citizens is a part of this, and we can’t stop it without them cooperating. It’s going to be a while, we don’t know how long or how bad it’s going to be, but it’s going to continue until we can get it stopped. We’re going to keep fighting it 24 hours a day until we can get it done.”
“We have military all over our state doing all kinds of great things like humanitarian missions, sending up food, helping with hospitals, and building new hospital beds. Your governor of New York is doing the same thing, so maybe you ought to try to talk with him.”