We discussed on The Editors last week how hard we should be on Biden’s rapid-testing failure. I’ve tended to make wide allowances for the federal government’s failing to keep up with the pandemic, but it’s worth noting how hard Biden hit the early testing failures during the campaign last year.
In his Covid plan, his team wrote, “It is unacceptable that with cases surging in some parts of the country and Americans urged to go back to work in others, we still do not have the basic capacity in testing and contact tracing we need to sustainably manage this virus. In Arizona, this past week, Americans with COVID-19 have had to wait in baking hot cars in miles-long lines for a test, and those were the lucky ones who had an appointment.”
And one of the top-line items of his plan was the promise to “Implement Widespread Testing-and-Tracing.”
And yet there’s this, which is the norm around the country:
Here’s the line of cars waiting for free #COVID19 tests on Mill Rd in Milwaukee. And no- I didn’t drive that fast. It’s sped up 4x. pic.twitter.com/qN2ZLkLjJR
— Mike De Sisti (@mdesisti) December 27, 2021
There’s a report, by the way, that the White House got a proposal a couple of months ago to produce 700 million rapid tests a month.