Marco Rubio Included in Time Magazine’s Special Look at the Coronavirus

This week, Time Magazine released an issue entitled “Finding Hope” looking at the coronavirus and included a prominent elected official from the Sunshine State in its contributors.

Time brought in “leading doctors, scientists, politicians, artists, athletes and entertainers” to “address the coronavirus pandemic by sharing insights into how to navigate this new reality and offering solutions to the challenges we must all now face, through op-eds, interviews with Time and more.”

Edward Felsenthal, the editor in chief and CEO of Time, weighed in on the issue.

“For this issue, which we had planned as our annual Time 100, we instead asked members of our TIME 100 community for insights and perspectives on some of the challenges we are all facing in navigating the new realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 50 of them agreed to be part of this special issue,” Felsenthal wrote. “Throughout these contributions, notes Dan Macsai, editorial director of the Time 100, who oversaw the issue, ‘there is an under­lying message of resilience and hope.’

“The Time 100 has always been a mirror of the world and the people who shape it. And as our world now looks far different than we expected, so too will our annual Time 100 list and issue when it appears in the fall,” Felsenthal added.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was included in the Time 100 and he looked at the human costs of any economic recovery.

“We cannot solve the economic crisis until we solve the public-health crisis caused by the coronavirus, but in the meantime, we took steps to ease the financial pain for our nation’s employers and their employees. And one of the best ways to do that was to try to keep employees employed,” Rubio, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Small Business Committee, insisted.

“The coronavirus pandemic reminds humanity of our vulnerability to the natural world, despite modern advances in medicines and technologies. It also reminds us that America is not immune to the pain and suffering that many nations endure all too often. That should be our call to aspire to something greater—a common good that works for our country well into the future,” Rubio added.

First elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rubio ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, losing to Donald Trump. Rubio won a second Senate term in 2016.

Reach Kevin Derby at kevin.derby@floridadaily.com.