News Release

Post Office Offering COVID Tests

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The Postal Service just announced that it is making free at-home COVID tests available.

LISA GRAVES, via Evan Vorpahl, evan@truenorthresearch.org, @itstruenorth
Graves is the executive director of the watchdog group True North Research and leads the BOLD ReThink project. She wrote the report “The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service.”

She said today: “The Biden administration’s launch of free, at-home COVID-19 tests is a welcome advance with the surge in infections, and deploying the U.S. Postal Service to deliver them is an excellent example of how this essential institution can provide needed public services.” She cautioned about the “Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy” and “his track record and his ongoing efforts to try to privatize postal operations one contract at a time.”

Said Graves: “The Postal Service is one of the largest workforces in the U.S. and with forward-thinking leadership it can play a significant role in providing services and assistance so many Americans need, like COVID-19 tests to help Americans protect their health and postal banking to give people a real, low-cost option for needed financial services. Unfortunately, it seems that DeJoy’s public banking pilot program was designed to fail.”

Graves highlighted how a public institution like a vibrant Post Office would stand in contrast to how companies have conducted themselves, pointing to the example of Abbott labs destroying Covid tests: “Abbott’s shameful and greedy conduct in destroying test components demonstrates yet again why the public cannot depend on such for-profit corporations to prioritize the public health over the company’s quests for higher and higher profits.

“Current law is not adequate to prevent such selfish and destructive conduct by corporations like Abbott, whose tests were touted by politicians and the public, until Abbott’s executives decided that they were not profitable enough to retain even as the pandemic continued to spread in the U.S. and abroad — even though Abbott made enormous profits since the pandemic began, unlike many industries and many individuals adversely affected by the pandemic.”

Graves is a former deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal policy at the U.S. Department of Justice and former chief counsel for nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.