Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that he's more worried about the economic impact of the spreading coronavirus outbreak than the health impact, and believes President Donald Trump should have an economic package ready to protect the United States from harm caused by disruptions in the Chinese supply chain.
"You could see a lot of secondary effects because the Chinese supply chain is so big," Gingrich told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "If that doesn't get fixed in the next couple of weeks, we are going to have to take steps here to offset the damage in China."
However, Gingrich said he thinks the reaction to the panic spreading about the disease has been "horrendous," as the numbers of people infected are much fewer than those who end up with the flu, and the disease is less deadly.
"There are 300-some people so far infected in Italy, I think in a country of about 50 million people," said Gingrich, whose wife, Callista, is the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See at the Vatican.
"We ought to put this in proportion," said Gingrich, pointing out that washing hands is the "most useful single step" in preventing the spread of the disease.
"At the present time, 98% of the deaths are in China," where the government's "totalitarian regime didn't want to be told the truth."
However, when China quarantined entire cities, that has created a "huge secondary impact" on the world's economy, said Gingrich.
"We are going to get this thing under control," said Gingrich. "We are going to find out that it is manageable. Its primary threat is to people over 80 years of age, or people already have another illness...so far, outside of China the number of people dying is very small."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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