Doctor: America’s handling of COVID-19 has been ‘an abject failure of leadership’

Dr. Hiral Tipirneni, Emergency Medicine Physician and Candidate for Congress in Arizona's 6th District, joins Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman to break down the latest coronavirus developments, as cases continue to climb across the U.S.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: All right, I want to shift over to the latest we're seeing play out on the pandemic front because, of course, the trend has been cases rising when you look at day values, each day versus the seven-day-ago numbers. We've seen that rising over the weekend, hitting more than 65,000 across the country. And when you look at it state by state, or region I should say, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands all stand alone in seeing cases over the last two weeks fall, but most states-- obviously outside of Texas here-- are showing the exact opposite with cases rising over that two-week period.

And for more on that as well as a couple other things, here to hone in on the pandemic front, want to bring on our next guest, Dr. Hiral Tipirneni, emergency medicine physician as well as a candidate for Congress in Arizona's sixth district, joins us now. And, Dr. Tipirneni, I guess first I just want to get your take on maybe where we're headed in terms of this case count because a lot of people are fearing what could come down the pike in this third wave if you want to call it that. What are you watching right now to get a sense of where we go from here?

DR. HIRAL TIPIRNENI: Yeah, well, Zack, good to be back with you. Certainly I wish we were discussing something more optimistic. Yeah, I think there's very real concerns about us, you know, going back into another spike, and quite honestly, I'm not sure that we ever fully came out of it. But, you know, Arizona-- definitely we had that very high surge back in June, July to the point where we were exhausting our medical resources, and we saw astronomical rises in cases as well as, you know, loss of life.

But, you know, why the numbers came down is because the public health guidelines work, because people implemented those guidelines, because they were wearing masks, they were limiting gatherings to small numbers. They were socially distancing. And what the concern is is that now people are getting lax because they saw those numbers come down and that they somehow think that, you know, this is now behind us. And so people are getting complacent, that maybe they're not wearing their masks. They're gathering in larger numbers. They're, you know, starting to frequent places that, you know, they really could do without.

And it's having an impact. Numbers are starting to tick up. We don't have, you know, a full solid trend, but what we're seeing already right now is worrisome, especially because, remember, we have a lot of school districts that have gone back to school in person. And so we have kids there. We have teachers, administration. They're all going back home to, you know, their families, and that is a concern that, you know, that continues to really complicate the numbers and put more people at risk. And right now we still-- we still don't have a comprehensive strategy, either at the national level or at our state level unfortunately.

ZACK GUZMAN: Well, yeah, I wanted-- I mean, Arizona deserves a proper shout outs there in terms of what was able to be done to bring the case counts down because that was a pretty marked decrease. But on the school front, that is interesting in terms of what we're seeing here in New York City about three weeks into the in-person teaching since schools reopened here. And interesting to see the tests come back on that. "New York Times" highlighting that 15,000 staff members, students were tested randomly. They got back about 10,000 of those tests-- only 18 positive cases. So kind of pointing that maybe some of those fears around students going back to school might have been overblown if it only yielded 18 positive tests out of the 10,000.

So talk to me about that. And when you talk about the plan, the national plan, that does seem to be a piece of the stimulus talks being stuck there as Democrats are pushing for more testing and tracing capability. So how do you pair those two and say, look, this is something we need? But maybe there is a positive data coming back when you think about schools, at least here in New York City.

DR. HIRAL TIPIRNENI: Yeah, and I think that's-- you know, that's great. There's definitely pockets where, you know, significant improvement has been made. And I have, you know, former colleagues who are out in that region that I have spoken to, and they're telling me about how it is working in certain communities, although other communities that's not so much the case, even, you know, in that surrounding area of New York City.

So it's really a matter of whether we have consistency in those practices. It's about the leadership we have in those communities. It's about the enforcement of those guidelines. And what I can tell you here in our state, unfortunately our governor has not been decisive on a statewide strategy, so it's really been left up to very thoughtful decision making by our mayors, and I, you know, give shout outs to Mayor Gallego, Mayor Romero, Mayor Evans because they're the ones who took the leadership role on. They're the ones who mandated masks in the cities, and that really helped us see those numbers come down.

So as long as we continue to have, you know, some degree of that enforcement, I think we can continue to keep the numbers down. But it's also about being vigilant, and that means as, leading into your second question, about testing. We don't-- we still here in Arizona are not at the capacity that we had promised we would be at by August. So we still don't have the testing capacity. We definitely don't have the contact tracing, and because of that, it is still very worrisome that we are putting more people at risk and we're not-- you know, we're not testing asymptomatic people.

I mean, obviously in what you mention in New York City, those numbers-- that included asymptomatic folks that were tested, right? They were tested across the board. We don't have that going on here. We are only testing symptomatic people, and so when you do that you're missing out on a lot of folks who may be pre- or asymptomatic but still carriers and therefore are still vectors of spread.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah.

DR. HIRAL TIPIRNENI: And we're catching those folks in time. And, you know, Arizona-- we had one of the largest numbers of children infected in the entire nation, so that is still very much a concern. We're talking about 2% of our pediatric population in Arizona, which is one of the highest in the country. So I still want to be very vigilant and very cautious as we go forward. And, look, as a physician, I can tell you it's about following the data, following the science every single time.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, that's normally what I like to focus in on on these doctor segments here when we're talking about the pandemic-- just focusing on the science and the data. You're a bit of a unique guest here when we talk-- when we talk about intermingling politics with that because you are running for Congress. And I want to talk about what we're seeing play out in Arizona there too-- and Wisconsin, because that's another worrying state here in terms of where the cases are coming from.

Over the weekend, President Trump hosted a rally there in Wisconsin. We're seeing more orders there to lockdown as cases continue to rise in the state. But in Arizona and Wisconsin, Joe Biden leads the president right now. In terms of what you're seeing play out there, including the district you're running for, what are you seeing from voters in their response to, I guess-- you know, the presidential race attracts a lot of eyeballs. But what does that do for races like yours across the ballot, down the ballot as well, here in handling this pandemic?

DR. HIRAL TIPIRNENI: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, look, people are yearning for real leadership, and they're not getting it right now in our current administration. They haven't gotten it from our current White House or our current governor and certainly not from my opponent. So this is about a clamoring for new leadership. People are very much concerned about the failings of this, of how we've managed this pandemic. I mean, look. It cannot be overstated that we are, what, 4% of the world's population, yet we have 1/5 of the cases and the deaths.

That is not a success story. We have seen other countries come out of this with much better numbers, much less morbidity and mortality. We should have done better. We could have done better, and folks realize that. And people are out there voting. This is how they're going to get their voices heard. This is how they will get new leadership is by making sure that they cast their ballots because they realize that, you know, that has been an abject failure of leadership. I'm glad to see that Vice President Biden is doing well in this state. You know, I think that's because he has put forth an actual strategy, an actual plan.

Again, same thing in my race. You know, my opponent has basically just followed whatever his party leaders have suggested without coming forth with any suggestions and not-- has not taken this pandemic seriously. As a physician, as somebody as a-- who respects science, I have put forth very clear steps that can be taken to bring this pandemic to bay.

And also, we have to address the next stage of this, right? If we're looking at a vaccine coming maybe in the next six months, eight months, nine months, let's proactively put together a plan of how we're going to actually mass produce that vaccine, how we're going to manufacture, how we're going to make sure that that supply chain is robust and functioning. How are we going to distribute it? Who are the populations that will first receive it, and how will we actually administer it?

All of these are questions that people have here on the ground because they are struggling every day with rising numbers of cases, of people that they have-- loved ones that have been lost, as well as the serious economic crisis that we find ourselves in. People are struggling every single day to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. They need new leadership, and that's why we're seeing this energy at the ballot box.