Rep. Jerry Nadler warned President Trump’s efforts to reopen the economy will lead to “thousands” dying.
Nadler told MSNBC’s Katy Tur on Wednesday that Trump is trying to reopen the economy to boost his chances of reelection and reopening the economy too early could lead to thousands of additional deaths from COVID-19.
“In terms of reopening, we have to be very, very careful. I know that the people are eager to reopen businesses. There are several things to consider. Number one, people are not going to come back to restaurants so fast when they’re worried about their own health. So that’s a little premature. Second of all, you can’t reopen businesses until we have enough testing that has been done. And far from enough testing has been done to justify allowing people to reduce the social distancing requirements,” the New York Democrat claimed.
Adding, “Again, we know that President Trump is trying to — for political reasons because he wants the economy to look good before his reelection, he’s trying to disregard the science and disregard the medical advice and get the businesses open again. But if that happens, it’s going to lead, predictably, to a lot more people getting sick and to another surge of the virus, another surge of sicknesses.”
“The president is trying to impose artificial, politically motivated deadlines so that the economy can look good before the third quarter for the election,” he continued. “If that happens, we’ll simply get a lot — thousands and thousands of more people dead, and we can’t do that.”
Nadler also argued that the United States hasn’t conducted enough COVID-19 tests and that the economy couldn’t reopen until the U.S. ramps up testing, but did not provide a target.
The White House released guidelines for states to follow before reopening the economy. They include a two-week downward trend of both flu-like illnesses and “covid-like syndromic cases,” a downward trajectory of positive tests or documented cases of COVID-19, and the ability for healthcare facilities to treat patients without crisis care and implementation of a “robust” testing program for healthcare workers.
