In Tijuana, hospitals are already overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses across the country have held public protests against the lack of protective gear, and several hospitals along the border have suffered outbreaks of the virus among medical personnel. Federal officials have been scrambling to buy respirators, long after seeing the outbreaks grip China, Europe and the United States.
One big reason for the competing death tolls in Mexico has to do with way the federal government is testing, vetting and reporting the data. The official results include a two-week lag, people familiar with the process say, which means timely information is not available publicly.
This is what the U.S. could have seen without early and concentrated action by the government. There are always going to be politically-motivated attacks on the administration for not acting “soon enough” or mishandling one aspect or another of testing, PPE supplies, or respirators. In a nation of 330 million people, we’re looking at a response involving tens of thousands of federal, state, and local employees along with thousands of more volunteers. The undertaking staggers the mind.
And it should have been a well-oiled machine, ready to spring into action at the first sign of trouble? That’s what Democrats would have you believe.
The administration’s response wasn’t perfect because people aren’t perfect. There were snafus. There was some incompetence that slowed things down — as well as some first-class, ingenious thinking that sped things along.
I understand the need by Democrats to politicize and demonize, but what’s the media’s excuse? I have yet to hear any attempt to explain what I outlined above — that the sheer scale of the response meant that it wouldn’t be humanly possible to be perfect from the start.
Is that really too much to ask?
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