Ahh, if only all of us had the sunny disposition of Donald Trump – then the COVID-19 crisis may never exist. Or at least what we wouldn’t know about could hurt us, right? Trump made headlines this week after suggesting removing COVID-19 testing as a way to reduce reported cases.
Speaking of Trump, hear about how Twitter hijacked his 74th birthday below:
During a roundtable on ‘Fighting for America’s Seniors,’ Trump said “if we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”
It’s a pretty mind-boggling statement, and sadly, it’s not the first time he’s made these kinds of claims. Last month, he told a tour of a medical supply distributor in Pennsylvania the same thing.
“Don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world. But why? We do more testing,” he said. “When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”
Trump’s most recent comments disregarding the importance of testing, and those from last month have attracted a tidal wave of criticism on social media.
One Twitter user joked, “ask any oncologist and they’ll tell you the secret to beating cancer is just never get screened for it. I mean, that’s just basic medicine.”
Another tweeted “and if we got rid of the bathroom scale, I’d fit into skinny jeans.”
Perhaps the best comeback was from Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump, who responded, “Well, yes, in the same way that if you stopped charging people with murder you’d have no murder convictions.”
The memes coming out of Trump’s comments are comical, but a distraction from the harmful nature of his words. A study conducted in March by researchers at the University of Padua and the Red Cross tested all residents of Vo, an Italian town of 3,000 residents near Venice for COVID-19.
Mass testing allowed researchers to quarantine people before they showed signs of infection, stop further spread, and eradicate COVID-19 from the town in under 14 days.
There are plenty of other factors at play, but with over 2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, putting an end to testing to avoid facing the facts feels like the wrong move from Trump right now.
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