After weeks of bipartisan complaints from governors and public health experts about his administration’s unconscionable failure to help states scale up coronavirus testing, President Donald Trump has finally unveiled an 11-page “blueprint” advertised as living up to Washington’s obligation.
If this is a road map for a country struggling to safely emerge from the grips of a pandemic, we’re lost.
What the plan does do, after Trump himself recently claimed that the feds would assume more of a leadership role, is revert to a hands-off approach to states struggling to get enough supplies to adequately diagnose their residents. It literally calls the federal government a testing “supplier of last resort.” Translation: Don’t look at us.
New York, perhaps anticipating Washington’s dropping of the ball, is already doing what it can. The state says it’ll soon be able to run 40,000 tests daily. By May, New York City promises 100,000 per week. Some experts say that’s too little, that we must triple, even quintuple capacity to safely reopen.
If we’re ever going to get there, the feds need to do so much more.
As Trump dithers instead of wielding federal power to ramp up tests, states understandably grow impatient to reactivate businesses. Premature reopenings unsupported by tests to identify who’s infected, who’s not and who’s (maybe) immune risks giving the virus a deadly second wind.
We trust New York, the center of the pandemic, will reopen only when safe, with robust testing, tracing and isolation systems in place. But viruses don’t respect state lines.
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