The president of the Federal Reserve, Neel Kashkari, said Americans should brace itself for 18 long months of shutdown.

The head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said America needs to brace the health care system and economy for that length of time until a vaccine is ready.

In an interview with CBS, he said: “We could have these waves of flare-ups, controls, flare-ups and controls, until we actually get a therapy or a vaccine.

“We need to find ways of getting the people who are healthy, who are at lower risk, back to work and then providing the assistance to those who are most at risk, who are going to need to be quarantined or isolated for the foreseeable future.”

He added: “This could be a long, hard road that we have ahead of us until we get to either an effective therapy or a vaccine.”

After over 16.6 million people filed for unemployment, he said: “It’s hard for me to see a V-shaped recovery under that scenario.”

Kashkari praised the Federal Reserve and also Jerome Powell, the chairman, for being ‘as aggressive as possible.’

“Our chairman is being very, very aggressive,” he said. “He’s learned from our experience in 2008 and the whole Federal Reserve is being as aggressive as possible. That’s the right thing to do.”

The Federal Reserve president, who oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program during the financial crisis in 2008, said Congress was also being ‘very aggressive.’

Kashkari said: “It goes back to the progression of the virus. If we’re going to have economic distress until we have a vaccine, then it’s going to be up to Congress to keep coming back to provide support to the American people.”

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