COVID-19 has shut down the NBA and caused the World Health Organization to issue a statement officially declaring the novel coronavirus a pandemic. President Donald Trump issued a travel ban to parts of Europe Wednesday, which has drawn both praise and criticism. National opinion writers have been quick to comment on how the preparedness — or lack thereof — of the nation, and call attention to the systems put in place to fight off global outbreaks of this scale.
Fox News published an op-ed highlighting the ways President Trump’s travel ban makes sense.
“If COVID-19 subsides with the flu season, this outbreak will be little more than a speed bump to the economy. But we need measures to ensure the economy can pick up where it left off and help folks through troubled times.” — James Carafano, Fox News contributor.
CNN’s Julian Zelizer felt President Trump didn’t act appropriately at the onset of the coronavirus outbreak.
“He has gone against the words of his own medical officials and left the country in a fog of Trumpian disinformation. He has primarily spoken about the pandemic in terms of providing economic stimuli that could mitigate its effects, rather than offering a plan for containing the spread of the disease.”
Washington Times tweeted an opinion piece taking the most recent news into consideration.
Juliette Kayyem, a contributor to The Atlantic, wrote President Trump “doesn’t grasp what Americans are going through.”
“The administration’s lack of candor does nothing to give the public hope. Citizens need to know that their government and its leaders adequately understand what has gone wrong and that they are capable of ameliorating it. After a disaster, the measure of a successful government response isn’t whether everything returns to normal. It’s whether people foresee opportunities for improvement.”
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has dubbed 2020 “the coronavirus election.”
“Michigan voted for Biden overwhelmingly for the same reason that both Biden and Sanders canceled rallies just before the vote — because this is now the coronavirus election, against whose stark existential stakes all normal political battles must give way.”
Politico’s contributing editor Rich Lowry opined that the U.S. nationalists aren’t nationalist enough.
“A foreign threat, emanating from China and requiring border controls and the exercise of government power to protect Americans, has arrived in the United States.
“Yet President Donald Trump spent the initial weeks minimizing the threat and talking of it magically disappearing, despite being a nationalist who has long emphasized the importance of borders and the danger of China.”