U.S. President Donald Trump holds news conference on the coronavirus outbreak at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 26, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Barria TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Donald Trump’s incompetent response to the coronavirus pandemic has put the United States on the same dangerous path as Italy.
That’s what Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said on Saturday, warning that Trump’s cataclysmic failure to supply adequate testing has set America weeks behind in the effort to curb this outbreak.
“At this point, we have lost three to four weeks of testing,” the Democratic senator said. “The first case of coronavirus was diagnosed in Italy on Jan. 31. [Five] weeks later, they’d closed down 25 percent of the Italian economy. Six weeks after that first case, they closed down the entire Italian economy.”
He added, “Three weeks lost on the front end of this does not make it any easier for us to contain it in the United States.”
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Sen. Durbin said:
I would certainly support any effort to put together a credible medical test that can be used in volume in the United States to really survey the number of people really infected to find out if there are clusters of those people and to make sure we do everything we can to mitigate any spread, but I will tell you, at this point we have lost three to four weeks of testing. Is that important? Well, think of this for a moment. The first case of coronavirus was diagnosed in Italy on January 31st. Five months later they had closed down 25% of the Italian economy six weeks after that first case they closed down the entire Italian economy. So six weeks from the first diagnosis to the decision to basically quarantine a nation, so three weeks lost on the front end of this does not make it any easier for us to contain it in the United States.
Donald Trump spent Friday’s news conference passing the buck for his failures to other people, even Barack Obama, but it is this president that has made America ill-prepared for a global pandemic.
As Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown proved on Friday, Trump was lying when he said he knew nothing about his own administration’s decision to disband the White House pandemic office.
From the lack of aggressive testing that the president himself stalled, to decisions made early in his administration to clean house at the pandemic office, Donald Trump alone has made America less prepared to deal with this crisis.
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