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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Video:
Sen. Dick Durbin says Trump has put America weeks behind where it should be in fighting the coronavirus outbreak. #ctl #p2 #amjoy pic.twitter.com/b33jDDKrmL
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) March 14, 2020
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.
Trump alone has made America less prepared for a pandemic
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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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
