OPINION:
The world has been upended by disease, and leadership has become a matter of life and death. Coronavirus infections globally have skyrocketed in recent days, and the United States now bears the largest reported share, though it’s likely that China’s are grimmer still.
The televised pandemic scorecard is hard to unsee: The number of cases worldwide can be rounded to 1 million and deaths to 50,000. The United States leads the suffering with more than 165,000 sickened but, thankfully, fatalities are “only” in the 4,000 range, so far. Major population centers are naturally hit the hardest. New York City, where the bumbling mayor encouraged large gatherings even as COVID-19 spread, is the American epicenter, with deaths ticking up minute by minute. Widespread “stay at home” orders aren’t expected to spare other urban areas like Chicago, New Orleans and Detroit. Investment bank Goldman Sachs is forecasting a 34 percent collapse in gross domestic product, and 15 percent unemployment is predicted for midyear.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faulted the president Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” for not acting more swiftly to protect the public from disease. “When did this president know about this, and what did he know? … As the president fiddles, people are dying. And we just have to take every precaution.” This from a champion of a new age of open borders who likes to lecture Americans about the immorality of a border wall because “It’s not who we are as a nation.”
President Trump offered a limited travel ban from China to the United States in late January, exempting scores of travelers. This was a half measure taken too late anyhow as the virus had been spreading for weeks. But the Democrats, if anything, were even more irresponsible. They faulted Mr. Trump for being too harsh rather than too lenient.
Undeterred by the spreading scourge, Mrs. Pelosi’s fellow House Democrats continued to promote their No Ban Act, legislation to limit the president’s authority to restrict immigrants from entering the United States. On March 12, when the president took the unprecedented step of adding Europe to the very limited travel ban, the speaker apparently grasped the unflattering optics and tabled the bill. Given the sudden shift in attitude that contagion causes, it might as well have been named the Freedom to Infect Act.
Open-borders policy is collecting dust in an age of pandemic. This could be why Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic challenger to Mr. Trump in November, is leading from beneath. Campaigning by podcast from his basement in Delaware, the man who told voters that illegal individuals brought to the United States as children are “more American than most Americans” would rather talk contagion than immigration.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.