You would think that with two months’ notice of the coronavirus, governments and health authorities would have already prepared for its arrival on our shores. But you’d be wrong. Everywhere you turn, you read stories of how governments and health authorities not only are unprepared, they’re actively doing things to make the crisis worse.
We all know that the coronavirus crisis in the US started in Washington state. But is that really because Washington was where the coronavirus first started? Probably not. It was just the first state to test for coronavirus, and it only did so after defying federal regulators.
Yes, that’s right, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) actively denied flu researchers in Washington the authority to test for coronavirus. But those researchers eventually did the tests anyway, without government approval. Once they found a case of coronavirus, they went public again. So how did the CDC and FDA respond?
They ordered the researchers to stop testing, then allowed them to test again, by which time they found even more cases. And then the feds demanded once again that they stop testing. So coronavirus could have been caught earlier, but federal bureaucrats wouldn’t allow a health crisis to override their bureaucratic rules and regulations.
Then there are the stories of passengers on airplanes traveling with coronavirus. In one case, a person traveling from New York City to Palm Beach, Florida was diagnosed with coronavirus. The person flew while still awaiting the results of the coronavirus test. And what happened to the other passengers on the plane? They were given information on how to monitor their health, and then released to go home. That’s a sure-fire guarantee to spread the virus far and wide.
But who knows, maybe some of those people had coronavirus already. We wouldn’t really know because the CDC has been absolutely abysmal in testing for the virus, with fewer than 100 people getting tested last week. You can read numerous anecdotal reports of people presenting to the hospital with coronavirus symptoms but being turned away because they weren’t suffering serious symptoms.
Many of those people who ended up developing serious complications could have been helped earlier had they been tested. And those who ended up being diagnosed with the coronavirus eventually but who were turned away earlier probably ended up infecting hundreds or even thousands of other people.
In all likelihood the coronavirus is probably already present in every community in the country, and has probably infected millions of Americans. There’s no stopping it now, despite all the quarantines and closures that are now taking place.
Repeated missteps on the part of governments and hospitals have basically guaranteed that every American will come into contact with the virus. And the worst part of it is, once the virus’ spread winds down and the crisis is seen to be much ado about nothing, governments will take the credit for stopping it, claiming that their decisive actions to ban public assembly and shut down schools and churches was crucial in stopping the virus’ spread.
That’s a load of BS, as everything governments are doing now is just closing the barn door after the horse has already bolted the stable. Enjoy your time in isolation, as it appears will be the fate for many Americans, and remember that there isn’t any crisis that governments can’t make worse through inaction and incompetence.