Mission Impossible

Trump made a speech today about reopening the country. The gist of the speech was a pass the buck thrust because even Trump realized that he couldn't order any governor, not even those who are predisposed to kowtow, to reopen their states to normal business or even abnormal business. But in that speech Trump said that governors are responsible for testing their citizens. Yes, testing needs to happen to reopen but Trump thinks governors can produce uniform testing that is trustworthy out of thin air.

How the heck is that supposed to even be true? The CDC initially controlled the production of the tests and failed miserably. The tests that the WHO initially described to countries were very good but the US refused to use those protocols. The tests that the US made were flawed from the start which meant we fell further behind other countries. This meant we had to go back to the drawing board but it also meant that procuring the chemicals for the tests was harder because all other countries were ahead of us in ordering those chemicals including the reagents necessary. We did such a poor job that the FDA granted emergency permission to outside private labs to make tests, many without any kind of supervision or testing. But on top of that debacle, everyone ended up competing to purchase whatever tests were available.  This ended up with municipal governments, state governments, local hospitals and other entities bidding against each other for whatever tests were available without any guarantee that those tests would be accurate or reliable.

Apparently Trump thinks that is a reasonable way to do business while he also points the finger at governors who already have the burden of running their states while their money is running out. If you are my age you remember Reagan saying that the worst words anyone can hear are "I am from the government and I am here to help you," but without government supervision, control, and oversight of testing which includes the productions of the tests themselves, there will not be an exit from this virus at any time in the near future.

We need tests, we need testing sites, we need labs to read the results, we need oversight of all of those components. The federal government is the only entity that can do all of that but Trump wants each individual state government to be culpable for failures so that he can point fingers and call names. He is deliberately setting up states to fail so he can point fingers while at the same time disclaiming responsibility.

If you want life to return to any semblance of normality, you need to contact your representatives and demand an overarching narrative so that every single state, every single county, every single city has the tests and the capacity to test plus the ability for labs to analyze those results. What we don't need is for some yahoo in Nowhere, USA, to say he has a test as long as we send him money and our bank routing numbers. What we don't need is a leader who clearly doesn't want to lead.