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On a press call today ahead of Donald Trump’s Arizona campaign event, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT); Yale University Professor of Public Health (Health Policy), Management and Economics Dr. Howard Forman; Tucson ER Physician Dr. Larry DeLuca; former senior HHS official and Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach; and Zac Petkanas of Protect Our Care’s Coronavirus War Room discussed the consequences of Trump’s failure to ramp up testing.
“Let’s be clear: coronavirus’ best friend is Donald Trump. Contrary to what Trump says, infections in Arizona and across the country aren’t spiking because more people are getting tested, they’re happening because of his continued unwillingness to tackle this virus and his apparent enthusiasm to do all he can to ensure its spread. Trump has been undermining the response to coronavirus from the very beginning, so of course he was telling the truth at his rally in Oklahoma. Right now, he is sitting on money Congress appropriated for him to increase testing, and he’s even shutting down testing sites in Texas. Throughout this crisis, this president has lived in a fantasyland, and now, he’s even admitting his sabotage out in the open,” said Senator Chris Murphy.
“We’ve always known that a critical part of gaining control of this outbreak and putting us on a path to save lives includes testing. And the White House knows too — which is why everyone who works there, including the president, is regularly tested. But when it comes to the American people, Trump uses a different standard than he uses for himself, and it’s only led to a worsening of this outbreak, especially in states like Arizona. Every time we miss an opportunity to test an individual, we are increasing the chance that someone will get infected or die, but under Trump’s leadership, instead of increasing testing capacity, he’s done the opposite. As a result, he’s only prolonging this crisis,” said Dr. Howard Forman.
“This crisis has been hard on medical providers like me, and the fact that our leaders haven’t done enough only makes it harder. The spikes in coronavirus cases in Arizona didn’t have to happen, but they did because our government’s leaders were complacent and focused on politics instead of science. They were warned that without adequate testing or contact tracing, cases in the state would spike — and spike they did. And even now, their refusal to act is putting even more stress on our state’s medical capacity and needlessly risking the lives of Arizonans,” said Dr. Larry DeLuca.
“Trump’s coronavirus response has been an utter disaster. Tens of millions of Americans are without a job and thousands of small businesses have shuttered. But it didn’t have to be this way. Other countries’ economies have survived this pandemic because they focused on one thing Trump refuses to focus on: testing. It’s not that Trump allowed the economy to collapse, he caused it. That’s what his refusal to ramp up testing while restarting his in-person rallies is doing. And to make things even worse, in just a couple of days, in the middle of this pandemic, Trump will try to make an awful situation catastrophic as he argues in front of the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act, putting millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions — including the two million who contracted the coronavirus — at risk,” said Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach.
“Trump is again bringing people together for an in-person rally after confessing that he asked his aides to slow down testing. His White House can try to deny it all day long, but Trump’s actions speak louder than their words. Trump is withholding $14 billion meant for testing and contact tracing while cases spike across the country. Trump wants to keep testing low because he thinks it’ll make him look better, but in reality all it’s doing is killing more Americans and further destroying our economy,” said Zac Petkanas, Director of Coronavirus War Room.
At his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday, Trump admitted that he intentionally slowed down testing to falsify reported coronavirus case numbers. While the White House tried to claim this was a joke (as Trump doubled-down on the claim), the truth is that his words were backed up by actions.
Just today, Trump made good on his promise to slow testing by ending support for seven testing sites in Texas at the end of the month. But that’s not all, the Trump administration has been withholding almost $14 billion in funding for testing and contact tracing, they have been reluctant to use the Defense Production Act to produce needed testing supplies and have not presented a plan to come close to meeting the testing needs articulated by experts as coronavirus cases continue to surge across the country.