The Trump administration failed with a botched initial test from the CDC that it was insisting on using. For some reason that has still to be adequately explained, the administration refused to accept the test the World Health Organization had provided to 60 other countries. Not only that, but the CDC "resisted calls from state officials and medical providers to broaden testing, and health officials failed to coordinate with outside companies to ensure needed test-kit supplies, such as nasal swabs and chemical reagents, would be available, according to suppliers and health officials."

Another major failure was the Food and Drug Administration's too-strict rules for that testing by outside companies. It finally just decided this week to allow more outside labs to develop tests, creating a run on the necessary supplies the CDC-developed test requires. Private labs were left out of the loop until basically this week, when the epidemic has already gained a foothold. How big that foothold is we do not know, because there has been such minimal testing that the scope of infection can only be hypothesized on the basis of what's happened in China, South Korea, and Italy.

Not testing for the virus to find out where it was means it can't be contained. Neil Fishman, chief medical officer at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and an infectious disease specialist, suggests that ship has already sailed. "If we would have had a true understanding of the extent of disease several weeks ago, implementation of social-distancing measures could have prevented the escalation of the disease."

Even The Wall Street Journal, no bastion of liberal media, admits that this negligence (not their word) started from the very top with Trump, as "early in the outbreak" he "appeared unable or unwilling to envision a crisis of the scale that has now emerged." That meant disorganization and a fractured response with no one person to "effectively coordinate among federal agencies or the private-sector labs." They quote Trump, who "repeatedly dismissed the threat of a broad U.S. outbreak, saying in late February, 'One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear.'"

There are no miracles to be had here. South Korea has demonstrated that by being pretty much the polar opposite of the U.S. in its response. In late January, when there were just four confirmed cases in the nation, health officials there put out the call to more than 20 medical companies to develop the test. At that point, "we were very nervous. We believed that it could develop into a pandemic," Lee Sang-won, an infectious diseases expert at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters. "We acted like an army," he said. Within a week, there was an approved test. Within a month, there were widespread drive-through test sites. Less than two months later, "the Koreans have tested well over 290,000 people and identified over 8,000 infections." That’s an effective response. Two weeks ago, South Korea was reporting a peak of 909 confirmed cases, this week it was 93.

The contrast is enraging medical professionals. "It makes me feel like I'm living in a farce," Dr. Ritu Thamman, a cardiologist and clinical assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine told Reuters. She pointed out that it's endangering the medical community because even the people treating patients who have likely been exposed aren't getting tested. "We are a rich country but we don't have these kinds of things?"