Biden Lied About Why COVID Tests Are In Short Supply issuesinsights.com/2021/12/21/bid…
The big news announced on Tuesday was that the administration would buy and distribute half a billion at-home tests to anyone who asks because, he said, testing is key to getting COVID under control.
But Biden promised the same thing last year. In fact, the very first item on his seven-point plan was to “fix Trump’s testing-and-tracing fiasco to ensure all Americans have access to regular, reliable, and free testing.”
Biden said he’d “double the number of drive-through testing sites … scale up our testing capacity by orders of magnitude … stand up a Pandemic Testing Board like Roosevelt’s War Production Board (to) produce and distribute tens of millions of tests.”
Yet the news today is filled with stories of people who can’t get tests.
At his press briefing Tuesday, a reporter asked Biden if the lack of sufficient tests was a failure. “No,” was Biden’s response. “COVID is spreading so rapidly. It just happened almost overnight.”
At his press briefing Tuesday, a reporter asked Biden if the lack of sufficient tests was a failure. “No,” was Biden’s response. “COVID is spreading so rapidly. It just happened almost overnight.”
He denied that it took too long to ramp up testing, saying that “the Omicron virus spread more rapidly than anybody thought … All of a sudden it was like everybody rushed to the counter.”
But as with so many things Biden says, that was a big, fat self-serving lie.
But as with so many things Biden says, that was a big, fat self-serving lie.
The shortage of COVID tests has been a problem for several months. Back in September, in fact, the Centers for Disease Control warned about a “shortage of COVID-19 rapid tests.” That was long before anyone had ever heard of an Omicron variant.
His latest proposal will probably be as successful as his first one. The administration is just now trying to figure out how to implement the distribution of these free tests, promising among other things to set up a website where people can order them.
The idea that the federal government can accomplish this task in such a short time is dubious.
Even if it can pull this off, Biden says the free tests won’t be available until some time in January.
Even if it can pull this off, Biden says the free tests won’t be available until some time in January.
But if this year’s winter peak is similar to last year’s, COVID rates will start to decline in early January, which means the tests will start going out after the crisis has already abated.
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