Diane Ravitch
I don’t know about you but I found tonight’s speech by Trump about the coronavirus to be extremely vapid. He praised the response of his administration to the crisis but didn’t say exactly what it was doing in real time. He did not mention the federal government’s failure to supply tests for the virus, which is a critical issue. Every major country in the world is testing more people per day than we are. We are not testing many people because tests are not available. After lavishing praise on his administration and the strength of our economy, he announced a travel ban with Europe, exempting Great Britain, which also has a coronavirus problem. Trump announced a variety of plans to help business, but investors were not reassured. According to reports on Twitter, stock futures plummeted after Trump spoke.
This is the way Joy Reid of MSNBC summarized the speech on Twitter:
Summary of Trump’s solutions to the coronavirus pandemic:
-ban European travel (though the virus is already here)
-business tax cuts
-payroll tax cut which cuts money from Medicare (the virus is most deadly to the elderly)
-bragging about the economy
-oh and wash your hands!
-ban European travel (though the virus is already here)
-business tax cuts
-payroll tax cut which cuts money from Medicare (the virus is most deadly to the elderly)
-bragging about the economy
-oh and wash your hands!
Business Insider reported this two days ago, and there is no reason that anything has changed in the past two days:
As the novel coronavirus spreads globally — more than 100 countries have reported cases — governments are ramping up testing.
South Korea and China have tested hundreds of thousands of cases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US has tested fewer than 2,000.
The US has performed five coronavirus tests per million people, compared with South Korea’s 3,692 tests per million people.
South Korea and China have tested hundreds of thousands of cases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US has tested fewer than 2,000.
The US has performed five coronavirus tests per million people, compared with South Korea’s 3,692 tests per million people.
As of Sunday, 1,707 Americans had been tested for the novel coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. South Korea, by contrast, has tested more than 189,000 people. The two countries announced their first coronavirus cases on the same day.
In the US, test-kit shortages have hampered health authorities’ ability to get a clear sense of how many Americans are infected. Compared with many other countries affected by the coronavirus, in fact, the US has done the fewest COVID-19 tests per capita.
South Korea’s testing total so far, when broken down into number of tests performed per million citizens, seems to be about 700 times as high than the US’s.
Ask yourself: What is the federal government doing to expand the supply of tests and distribute them across the nation?
Trump did not address this issue tonight.
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