On Wednesday, May 27, Republican state Rep. Andrew Lewis of Pennsylvania confirmed that he tested positive for COVID-19 and shared that he had been self-quarantining for several days before his positive test result. According to Lewis, he felt ill for several days before his test, which occurred on May 18. He reportedly tested positive on May 20 and noted that “out of respect” for his family, he decided to keep quiet about his diagnosis, but that “every member or staff member who met the criteria for exposure was immediately contacted and required to self-isolate for 14 days from their date of possible exposure.” Democratic representatives are furious, however, as they argue they only just found out about the risk of coronavirus spread in the shared state Capitol. One Democratic state rep, Brian Sims, has gone viral as of last night, sharing a passionate video on Facebook Live in response to the news.
Sims doesn’t hold back. "Every single day of this crisis this State Government Committee in Pennsylvania has met so that their members could line up one after one after one and explain that it was safe to go back to work," he states in the video. He alleges that while members were testing positive, they notified one another, but “didn’t notify us.”
"I never ever, ever knew that the Republican leadership of this state would put so many of us at risk for partisanship to cover up a lie, and that lie is that we're all safe from COVID,” he stated in the live video on Wednesday night.
“I just spent the better part of the last 11 weeks sitting across a room from people who would eventually test positive and decided not to tell us. They did do some kind of quarantine […] They did do some kind of contact tracing [...] They, I guess, being Republican leadership,” Sims continued in the video that lasted over ten minutes.
Sims shared that he “secretly” donated a kidney to someone who was “dying of renal failure” in his city in January. “You have no idea how the people around you are impacted,” he stressed, “and that’s why it’s so important to notify people.”
“Every single day that our gerrymandered Republican leadership has been calling us up into this building so they could pass these ridiculous bills pretending that it was safe to be out there, they were covering up that it wasn’t safe,” Sims stated. The context here is that the GOP in Pennsylvania has been pushing to reopen the state, including to have businesses reopen. Republicans have a majority in the state House.
Sims called on the Speaker of the House, Mike Turzai, to resign. He also advocated for any members of Republican leadership who had known what was going on and didn’t tell those who were exposed to be investigated by the attorney general. He called for prosecutions. U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle also called for Turzai to resign.
“Holy sh-t,” he states. “Holy sh-t! Exposing all of us up here to this crap […] While simultaneously telling people, telling families that it was safe to be outside, that it was safe to be interacting with other people, while you were testing positive, while you were quarantining the people around you, while you were doing contact tracing [...]”
Sims also tweeted about the situation.
Though Sims is probably the most passionate and memorable, especially given the amount he curses in the video, other Democrats were horrified at well. In a statement, minority chairman of the House Health Committee, State Rep. Dan B. Frankel, put it simply: “The virus doesn’t care about someone’s ideology [...] The virus doesn’t care if you believe in it.”
Rep. Jennifer O’Mara, also a Democrat, said this isn’t a “Republican or Democrat” issue, but rather a “human being issue.” She said that the decision to keep information about public health hidden put “all of us at unnecessary risk.”
"I only interacted with a couple of people. I did what I needed to do to protect their privacy. They’ve had time to get their test and all those things,” Lewis stated in his own Facebook Live. He described the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as a “ghost town.”
Over 100,000 people in the U.S. have died as a result of the coronavirus. More than 5,000 of those deaths are reported in Pennsylvania.
You can check out a copy of the Facebook Live video on YouTube, as well.