Coronavirus Unmasks America

The nation will recover from this coronavirus crisis. And policymakers will have the chance to address the cracks in our preparedness that this virus response has laid bare. What’s less certain, however, is how we as a nation can address the weaknesses in ourselves.

By Rachel Bovard • March 21, 2020

The Chinese coronavirus crisis has unmasked much about America in just a few short weeks: the vulnerabilities in our critical supply chains, the burdensome and bureaucratic regulatory regime that stifles our public health response, the selfishness of Millennials and Gen-Zers who think social distancing is an Instagram meme, and the latent corporatism in both of our established political parties.

One hopes that when we are collectively on the other side of this, we can all have a national conversation about what went wrong and adjust our policy parameters accordingly.
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This will require, first, the pro-China hawks to go back to their think-tank offices, shut the doors, and not say anything for a year or five or 10. The inability to look critically at China—in fact, the repeated shouting down and shunning of anyone who suggested that outsourcing our critical supply-chain capabilities to China was a bad thing—has left us, as a country, unable to produce even the basics of a potential coronavirus vaccine. It has also left us at the mercy of Chinese whims, since Chinese-owned supply chains produce an overwhelming majority of our antibiotics and other critical drugs upon which millions of Americans rely.

In fact, when Chinese supply chains faltered as they struggled with the early containment of coronavirus-- excerpt, rest at link above --

Yeah, I thought she did well with the regulatory and bureaucratic burden and the problems with China, but her last point was just wrong.

Yes, the part about China (although she is way too easy on what needs to happen to the so called "pro-China hawks"), and the part about the regulatory aspects was fine.... but the last part of it was pure unadulterated bullshit.... absolute garbage....

Setting that aside.... there needs to be a watchdog function going on to stop these bastards from slipping all of those eliminated regulations back in..... when no one is looking..... because you know damn well that they will....

And if the gubmint didn't eff up so badly in this, they wouldn't have to be spending trillions to cover over their gross stupidity.... (and that is putting it mildly....)