Yesterday, while speaking on the Senate floor, Senator John Cornyn finally admitted the need for a better testing strategy for COVID-19, including testing of asymptomatic individuals. This marked a decisive change in tune from his usual downplaying of the importance of testing in general, and strategic testing of asymptomatic people in particular, here and here and here and here and here and again here.
This reversal comes amid Texas experiencing record numbers of COVID-19 cases and hospitals reaching ICU bed capacity.
Imagine what Senator Cornyn could have done over these last six weeks to increase and improve our testing strategies if he wasn’t busy refuting health experts who were warning that opening too soon “without widespread testing… could trigger outbreaks” and sharing an op-ed refuting the need for testing to reopen the economy.
This also comes as Cornyn told a town hall audience that “we’ve seen a surge of personal protective equipment so that’s no longer an issue,” even though it is still being reported across the state that health care providers are worried about their supply lasting through the surge.
“Cornyn analogized the fight against COVID-19 to trying to ‘design and build an airplane while flying it.’ He should have also said that he has been ignoring the actual ‘aeronautical engineers’ that have been telling him and his colleagues exactly what to do. We are months into this pandemic, now with states closing down a second time, and Cornyn’s failure to recognize the critical importance of a testing strategy, and of testing asymptomatic carriers of the virus, has been disastrous. Texans want leaders, like MJ, who will listen to the experts from the start and not play politics with our safety,” said Jake Lewis, MJ for Texas spokesperson.