This is a great point: deliberately depressing testing is a terrible strategy to prevent general panic (besides being incredibly irresponsible), because it makes the case mortality rate much higher, which makes people *more likely* to panic and overreact.
There's also the fact the depressing testing makes the virus more difficult to contain and far more likely to spread -- which, you guessed it, will also contribute to a general panic. Besides, you know, getting more people killed
This is this administration's 2nd real crisis (non self-inflicted) -- the first one was hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017. Given how that was handled, the current criminally incompetent crisis response is par for the course
