Let’s break this down.
In an international pandemic (which are quite rare), the focus should always been on getting people on the ground where it emerged and making sure the pathogen is isolated and identified. Next, the CDC would set up testing and coordinate contact tracing for all known exposures, with assistance from local and state authorities. Lock down your borders to all international travel immediately and quarantine everyone who came in the last 30 days.
The military can be useful here as well, more boots on the ground the better.
Where infected people go can be traced by federal agencies such as the NSA, CIA and FBI, with assistance from local cops and telecoms.
Once a test is complete and effective, use the DPA to focus all production on reagents and swabs. Set up labs in every state and focus on hot spots, test every living thing you can until you break the spike.
Have the NIH and FDA green light all studies that can either identify therapies or vaccines.
Use the DPA to prompt US manufacturers to create enough PPE, vents and pumps.
Have the President enforce a 50 state mask mandate, and make it seem patriotic to do so.
Instead, we had no boots on the ground in China, we delayed closing borders, we botched the test, we still haven’t used the DPA for PPE and we have forced 50 Governors from 50 different states to compete for swabs and reagents for testing, to find PPE on their own and to somehow manage a pandemic without the resources the Federal Government has, such as a military, the CDC, the NIH and the FDA.
The Federal Government was uniquely suited to this task. We should have been the example of what and how to address this pathogen, it is completely unacceptable to me that every other western democracy did better than us and the reason is fairly simple. We relied on state officials to do Federal tasks and they simply weren’t suited to the task.
