Indiana Sen. Mike Braun (R) affirmed that the United States is “in as good a shape” and “as prepared” as any nation to manage the coronavirus, given the infrastructure the country has, while Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are trying to “weaponize” the infection to win political points.

In an interview with Breitbart News Thursday, Braun said he was in the “behind closed door meeting” on Tuesday and concluded as a result that, given the infrastructure the country has, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. is ready to manage a spread of infection.

Braun stressed this coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 infection “should be an eye-opener for all of the world” and that the U.S. must remain “vigilant”:

I think it’s going to be an increasing issue over time … And the fact is, this happened somewhere else, where they didn’t have the benefit of that [infrastructure]. We’ve had very few instances here, but we need to be vigilant. We need to be prepared, like it could happen here. I just think that we, of any country, are going to be in as good a shape to deal with it. And it’ll play itself out. The markets are going to be hurt because real economic activity has been disrupted.

Braun said the spread of the COVID-19 infection reveals quite a bit about China.

“Its weaknesses, in terms of are we getting the full information,” he explained:

They obviously do not have the infrastructure to deal with it. You could see that with the scrambling, where they were building hospitals, kind of on demand from it. I don’t think they have the equivalent of the CDC, the NIH, the Department of Homeland Security, all of that, and I think that’s why it mushroomed and ballooned.

The senator suggests American companies will likely begin to scrutinize their relationships with China.

“Many companies are going to start looking at their supply chain,” he said. “You know how deep it is in China, and probably get an eye-opener about what to do about that down the road.”

He added:

When you’ve got places – where they think it might have started with a bat at a food market – that is scary. And I think they’ve got probably some institutions and components of their culture that was the kind of public setting for something like this to arise, and it’s probably the biggest setback they had as a country, even more so than grappling with tariffs and taking them on for their bad behavior as world trading partners. So, I think they’ve had a one-two blow that, oh, probably, hopefully, will be an eye opener to them to see how they might change things down the road. I think that, as far as us, we will deal with it as well as any other country. And sadly, a lot of it is unknown, in terms of how expansive it’s going to get. It is a virulent strain of coronavirus, and we need to have a heads-up accordingly.

Braun’s comments about Schumer using the coronavirus infection as a political weapon echoed what the Associated Press revealed in its fact check Thursday that observed Democrat presidential candidates are distorting the truth to Americans about the country’s readiness to manage the virus.