FRANKLIN, TN — Dr. Aaron Milstone, a Franklin-based pulmonologist who along with 2,000 doctors and nurses is calling on Gov. Bill Lee to issue a two-week, statewide stay-at-home order to curb the spread of coronavirus, appeared Tuesday on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes.
“I think Chris, the main issue for here is I’ve had multiple doctors, multiple nurses, multiple health care providers come to me and say, ‘Speak up for us because we don’t want our patients to die and we don’t want to die.’” And that’s a strong inspiration for me.
My strongest feeling is that if Tennessee Gov. Lee fails to act, then you may be responsible for up to 40,000 avoidable deaths based on very conservative models here in our state.
That’s right. The impact of a stay-at-home order for our state could take that number from 40,000 and drop it by ten fold for instance. If we do the right thing, we’re going to have an incredible impact on the health, safety and welfare of our citizens.
…It took a while for this pandemic to reach Tennessee and for the numbers to start to increase. Now we realize that this is something we cannot control. Just within the last 40 to 72 hours, multiple hospitals in Middle Tennessee are seeing patients with COVID on the ventilator, on life support, fighting for their lives and it’s only going to get worse if we continue on the current path.
Here in the state of Tennessee, we need one thing to protect Tennesseans: We need Gov. Lee to issue the stay-at-home order. Again, if he fails to act, tens of thousands of Tennessean’s lives are at risk.
And we know it works. We’ve seen it work in 17 other states. We know it can make a difference.”
