After problems arose with the C.D.C.’s test, officials could have switched to using successful tests that other countries were already using. But the officials refused to do so, essentially because it would have required changing bureaucratic procedures.To which NYT copy, Reynolds adds the following:
The federal government could also have eased regulations on American hospitals and laboratories, to allow them to create and manufacture their own tests, as Melissa Miller of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine told The Washington Post. But federal officials did not do so for weeks.
On Facebook, Virginia Postrel observes, “The people who screwed this up weren’t Trumpites. They were the pros.”Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIH essentially admitted as much on Bret Baier's Fox News Special Report last evening. If memory serves, he said, "We aren't set up to react to this type of threat."
When things calm down, Congress will have to determine (a) why not and (b) what is needed to be better prepared next time. For there will be a next time.
