President Donald Trump’s persistent see-no-evil posture on coronavirus testing — if you don’t look for the virus, the cases go away — defies both science and street sense.

TRUMP: “I have authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the U.S. with up to 10 years in prison per the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act, or such other laws that may be pertinent.

THE FACTS: The U.S. is nowhere near the level of testing needed to stem the virus, according to his own health experts.

The U.S. stumbled early in the pandemic response as the CDC struggled to develop its own test for the coronavirus in January, later discovering problems in its kits sent to state and county public health labs in early February.

It took the CDC more than two weeks to come up with a fix to the test kits, leading to delays in diagnoses through February, a critical month when the virus took root in the U.S. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Matthew Perrone in Washington and Beatrice Dupuy in New York contributed to this report.