Former Vice President Joe Biden (D) is offering his thoughts on how he would mitigate the effects of the coronavirus crisis if he were president.
Biden penned an op-ed for The New York Times laying out his plan to safely reopen the economy of the United States.
He opens the op-ed claiming President Donald Trump has not offered an answer as to how he is going to safely reopen the American economy. He then goes on to list three ways he would approach doing just that.
The first is reducing the number of new cases. He writes social distancing guidelines have to continue and medical supplies need to be provided to those on the front lines.
Biden calls on Trump to use the Defense Production Act to provide those resources and to start doing his job.
“He needs to get the federal response organized and stop making excuses. For more Americans to go back to their jobs, the president needs to do better at his job,” Biden writes.
The second way Biden writes he would reopen the nation safely is by making testing easily available. He claims the country needs to be performing more diagnostic tests and preparing a second form of testing.
Biden comments on the way Trump has handled testing.
“We are now several months into this crisis, and still this administration has not squarely faced up to the ‘original sin’ in its failed response — the failure to test,” Biden writes.
The third strategy he lists is making sure hospitals are prepared for “flare-ups” of the coronavirus after the economy reopens. In doing so, Biden says hospitals need proper resources.
He explains he would meet with industry leaders to determine the ways they can operate more safely.
Biden closes his op-ed reiterating the Trump administration has failed in its approach to the coronavirus, “As we prepare to reopen America, we have to remember what this crisis has taught us: The administration’s failure to plan, to prepare, to honestly assess and communicate the threat to the nation led to catastrophic results. We cannot repeat those mistakes.”