Roy Blunt: “the response to the coronavirus has made it clear that there are lots of things that are the responsibility of…”

“the response to the coronavirus has made it clear that there are lots of things that are the responsibility of individuals, things like staying at home if you are sick--frankly, staying home if you are more likely than others to be sick--and practicing the kinds of hygiene our mothers taught us we should follow all along. Personally, I may have set a new personal record for just washing my hands in the last 2 weeks. I have never been averse to washing my hands, but I don't know that I have ever washed them half a dozen times a day or more before. Those kinds of things are left up to us. Then there are things that are left up to the local level, things like determining in a local community whether things should be open or not and what kinds of activities should be the activities where you draw the lines in terms of crowds. That is more likely to be better decided at a local level by even a State or, more likely, by a mayor or a county executive than by somebody here in Washington. Then at the national level, we are moving toward our third package now in the last few days to try to deal with this. The first package was about $8 billion, which was really focused on the immediate health response--supplies, developing a vaccine, trying to figure out what the right therapies were, understanding the things we needed to do to further help hospitals get ready and to further encourage people to go places other than hospitals when that worked.…”