Ron Klain, the former Ebola czar in the Obama administration, pointed out that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson wouldn’t have gotten tested for coronavirus if they were in the US.
Hanks tweeted that he and his wife Rita Wison tested positive for coronavirus:
— Tom Hanks (@tomhanks) March 12, 2020
Klain said on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show:
I look back on this, Rachel and what we will see, we knew this was coming in December, we knew it was coming in January, the president talked tough on travel and in the meantime we weren’t getting ready on testing, we weren’t getting our health care facilities ready. We weren’t doing the things we needed to do knowing this was coming. We had the warning. That is the real tragedy here.
We had a warning that this was coming and the kind of numbers that were coming and we are still sitting here having a conversation here about testing. Tom Hanks got tested because he is in Australia. If Tom Hanks was in New York, it would be almost impossible for him to get tested.
Klain is one-hundred percent correct. The United States has been monitoring the coronavirus since December 2019. The Trump administration had ample time to prepare test kits, and distribute them as soon as health officials realized that the virus was going to reach the US.
Trump’s coronavirus Oval Office address was a disaster. He is still doing nothing to address the public health side of the crisis. If Hanks and Wilson would have been anywhere in the US, they may not have been able to get tested, even if they wanted it.
Tom Hanks’ tweet illustrated how big the severity of Trump’s failure to protect the American people has become.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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