WASHINGTON (CN) — Six months into the Covid-19 pandemic and with three times the number of Americans dead from the novel respiratory virus than were killed in the Vietnam War, House Democrats slammed the Trump administration on Thursday for the lack of a cohesive 50-state strategy to end the crisis and repair a hemorrhaging economy.
Five congressional committees delivered the 6-page assessment this morning jointly with the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis, a unique oversight body that is modeled after the 1941 task force created by President Harry Truman to account for any waste, fraud and abuse that occurred in World War II military spending.
Like those of a war, the ripple effects of the pandemic have infiltrated every aspect of American life. Over 31 million Americans are out of work and officials like Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell have predicted that, so long as the virus goes uncontained, economic recovery will remain sluggish.
Representative Jim Clyburn, the select committee chairman, told reporters Thursday that this crisis has been exacerbated by the monthslong pattern of “denial, distortion and delay” by the president and some members of his administration.
Whether it has been communicating to the public the inherent danger of a little-understood virus in the initial days of the outbreak or truthfully addressing personal protective equipment and test-kit shortages still plaguing cities and states today, the messaging and ultimately the strategy from the White House since March has been piecemeal and as a result catastrophic, the report finds.
Democrats were quick to push back against the expected criticism of their assessments, that they are inflating the issue as a political weapon.
Underlining their findings, Clyburn pointed to the committee’s findings that the lack of proper gear to treat infected patients was a recurring factor for the 100,000 health care workers who contracted the virus, as the White House dawdled on enforcing the Defense Production Act to ramp up supplies.
The proof too is in the sworn testimony of frontline workers like Eric Colts, a Detroit bus driver who came to Congress in May. Like many others working at grocery stores or on public transit, Colts pleaded for a uniform national strategy, asking lawmakers to encourage national mask-wearing and social distancing in the workplace so that others would not meet the same fate as his friend Jason Hargrove.
A fellow bus driver, Hargrove died of Covid-19 in April just 11 days after a woman openly coughed on his bus. To keep the bus safe for himself and his passengers, Hargrove was left to bring his own supplies, his widow, Desha Johnson-Hargrove, recalled to Time.
The president never issued a national mask mandate and has indicated he will not, preferring instead to let states decide enforcement on their own despite case rates and deaths ticking up unevenly across the U.S. in the last six months.
It was not until July 21 and the death toll had already reached 140,000 that Trump finally appeared at a White House coronavirus task force briefing and called for greater mask-wearing.
Notably, however, his statement was not unequivocal.
“In theory you don’t need the mask. I’m used to the mask. The reason is, think about patriotism. Maybe it helps. It helps. We have experts that have said in the recent past that masks aren’t exactly good to wear, you know that. But now they’ve changed their mind,” Trump said last month.
That message came during the first briefing the president gave on the pandemic in 85 days, having suspended them after confounding health authorities by waxing on the merits of ingesting bleach as means to fight the virus.