New Jersey Star-Ledger: Trump has given up on COVID. That’s terrifying | Editorial

MARLTON, NJ — Today, the New Jersey Star-Ledger published an editorial lambasting the president’s failed response to the coronavirus while highlighting Congressman Andy Kim’s leadership on behalf of the people of New Jersey. Andy spoke on his conversations with small business owners across the community, contrasting the action they need with the inaction of the Trump White House. On the president, Andy said, “He lacks the recognition that this is about people’s lives, and we can still stop this.” In Congress, Andy is fighting for significant increases in funding for small businesses, federal help with testing, and a national strategy to prepare for the second wave ahead.

Read the Full Editorial Below:

America now has the highest COVID death toll of any country, yet still no national plan for doing the testing, contact tracing and isolation that stops big outbreaks.

These measures have allowed other countries to tamp down on new infections early, by identifying them even before people show symptoms. You need a low transmission rate to ensure that enough customers are willing to go out and support local businesses.

Yet incredibly, President Trump now has a plan to cut funding for testing and contact tracing from a Republican proposal – exactly what you need to keep things open in a pandemic.

This time, it’s Senate Republicans doing the asking, to provide $25 billion for these efforts. It’s part of an aid package that was less than what Democrats wanted. But the White House wants to zero out the funding for testing efforts entirely.

Congressman Andy Kim says small business owners are freaking out. “They are terrified about what’s happening going forward,” he told us this week. “There’s a real possibility that there could be shutdowns again. It’s not outside the realm of possibility, when you see cases in the rest of the country spike.”

He talks to desperate folks in his South Jersey district, which Trump won in 2016, who are doing everything they possibly can. Then he goes back to Washington, where he serves on a coronavirus task force, and watches the president abdicate the most important roles of the federal government: providing funding and oversight in a public health emergency.

This $25 billion is a small investment compared to the sheer amount we’ve had to throw at our economy so far, Kim notes. Why in the world would we not take more funds to help this fight on the public health side? It could save billions or trillions later, by avoiding future shutdowns.

But Trump is not managing this crisis. He is vandalizing it. He is fighting in court to take away health care from millions – including protections for those with pre-existing conditions, like coronavirus survivors – and throwing the onus back on states that clearly need federal help.

Kim, who led an effort in New Jersey to ask this administration for help with more testing, now watches those same requests being put forward by Arizona, Texas and other states. “It’s sad to see a lot of those officials run into the same dead end that I did,” he said.

States like New Jersey and New York are still vulnerable to big outbreaks. It might take 7 to 10 days to get a test result, which means infected people can unknowingly spread the virus during that long wait. How helpful is that, really?

Yet this administration thinks it’s done enough. That’s why it’s pushing back on any additional funding for testing, even as the virus surges. Other countries have safely reopened, thanks to more robust testing, contact tracing, and personal efforts like social distancing and mask-wearing.

Trump, meanwhile, has been smearing his top infectious disease expert, and calling on states to “liberate” themselves from his administration’s own public health guidelines. “He lacks the recognition that this is about people’s lives, and we can still stop this,” Kim marvels.

The U.S. now has one of the highest infection rates in the world, and deaths are on the rise again. Trump’s strategy of downplaying the disease and pointing the finger back at local officials has backfired, spectacularly.

“My greatest fear is that the surge that we’re seeing again all over the country is uncontainable,” the South Jersey congressman added. “I was doing a lot of work preparing for a second wave. And what we’re in now is just the tail end of the first wave.”

Imagine how bad things will get this winter, if there is a second.