John Oliver has now focused on the coronavirus in six episodes of Last Week Tonight. And given the continuing spread of the pandemic — the U.S. death toll recently surpassed that of the Vietnam War — it seems likely that it'll remain a focus for some weeks to come.
The host has previously spoken about Donald Trump's response to COVID-19 as well as the right-wing reaction to the pandemic, but on Sunday night he switched his focus to testing. And, specifically, all the ways the U.S. government has approached it (or not) — from mixed messages and misinformation to a strategy that's been marred by a slow response and a lack of tests.
"Look, some confusion is inevitable when a new disease starts spreading its way around the world, and it's not like rolling out testing on this kind of scale was ever going to be easy," says Oliver. "But again and again, the people in charge failed to prepare for the worst case scenario and have been slow in fixing mistakes. All of which means in May we are still playing catch up with a pandemic, which in turn means thousands upon thousands of people dying preventable deaths."
Oliver finishes by saying that testing needs to be scaled up, and quickly.
"If we want to return to the world that we're used to — one with sports, restaurants, hugs, and turning down party invitations because it's raining and not because you might die — testing is how we get there. And that is a message that should really unite everyone in this country."
