Tests for Me, Not for Thee

Last week, the White House made a significant attempt to portray “normalcy” - we saw meetings in the Oval Office in close quarters with no social distancing and no masks; the Vice President began official travel again, still with no mask; and the White House press briefing returned, again with no masks.  It was a show, a very purposeful show, of our return to before, of opening up. 

To make all of this happen, with the COVID infection rate in the US remaining the highest of any major developed country in the world per capita (and not falling), the White House created a regime of ubiquitous, rapid testing for the President and Vice President and anyone they come in contact with. The problem with this story, of course, is that this type of testing regime is something that the President has explicitly said he is not attempting to provide for the people of the United States.  If this is what it takes to “re-open,” and we know that the American people don’t have it and won’t at best have it for many months, why is the President working so hard to undermine and end the stay-at-home policies which have worked to slow the virus?  As Simon said in this Washington Post story from over the weekend, the President did more last week to show us how far we are from returning to normal than how close it all is. 

As we’ve been writing for months now, once the virus started spreading here in the US (which we now know was in mid to late January), the President had two choices - mandatory stay at home orders, and/or an aggressive testing/tracing/isolation regime like the one South Korea implemented immediately.  Today, he has still chosen to do neither, and as the President has essentially ended the national stay at home period, it is imperative that Congress force the President to adopt a national testing/tracing/isolation system.  Without such a national system, it is going to be very hard to slow the current far too rapid spread of COVID and give people confidence that their government is doing everything it can to keep them safe in this period before a vaccine comes. If these two things aren't the case, we will have enormous trouble beginning the recovery that the President so desperately wants. 

From the very beginning, the President’s response to COVID has been outside of science and reason, and full of magical and wishful thinking. Not surprisingly, it just hasn’t worked. Poll after poll show the President’s approval rating plummeting now, frontline governors 20-30 points more popular than him, and broad majority support for more aggressive measures to attack the virus.  What remains so difficult to understand is why the President refuses to do what he knows needs to be done - which is why, now that Congress has begun to return, winning Phase II of our nation’s response to COVID should be the highest priority for both Speaker Pelosi and Senator McConnell.  If the President refuses to fight the battle against COVID, they must, along with the nation’s governors, take the lead.