Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) criticized the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
She claimed Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that lives would be lost “because we weren’t prepared.”
Whitmer said, “The problem that we have right now is, we don’t have enough test kits. I heard your conversation with the man from FEMA — we need test kits because these numbers are informative to only to a certain extent. We know that COVID-19 has infected a lot more people than just those who are being tested and testing positive. And that’s why in order to make decisions, we really need better data. We’re all building the airplane as we fly it right now. We’re doing the best that we can. We’ll continue to be aggressive and continually monitoring what our next move. But we need the federal government to get us those test kits.”
She continued, “We need clear directive and guidance from the federal government. Frankly, a patchwork strategy of each state doing what they can, is — you know, we’ll do it if we have to, but it would be nice to have a national strategy.”
She added, “Had the federal government really started focusing when it became clear that the whole world was going to be confronting this, we would be in a stronger position right now.”
She concluded, “Lives will be lost because we weren’t prepared. Our economy will struggle longer because we didn’t take this seriously as early enough as a country. And there are going to be consequences of that, but right now I’ve got to solve problems, and I need the federal government to help me make sure that I’ve got what we need for our frontline providers, in particular, but also ventilators for people that are going suffer.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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