Naturally, there are concerns in both Singapore and South Korea that the efforts to contain the epidemics in those nations are trampling on privacy rights. This seems particularly true in South Korea, where the constant stream of phone-based alerts is sometimes a little … too narrative when it comes to describing the people who have tested positive and how they acquired the virus. But the one thing that all these countries have in common is that they are taking the threat of the pandemic seriously, moving firmly, and delivering a message that shows that their governments realize the potential results of failure.

There are certainly governments out there that are not being honest. That includes Iran’s, which suppressed information about the outbreak there until long after that nation had become a hub for spreading coronavirus to over a dozen other countries. But the United States may be unique among the world’s democratic nations in its simple inability to tell its citizens what is going on.

On Tuesday, the coronavirus task force under Mike Pence announced that a million tests would be available at the end of the week. That was then amended to having the tests “in the mail” to state and local officials by the end of the week. Then a million became 75,000. And then the end of the week became next week. And then came the admission that the U.S. will not have the tests it needs over the coming weeks.

The shortage of testing materials has made CDC declarations that it has loosened regulations over testing protocols about as pointless as NASA giving everyone permission to build their own moon rockets—permission doesn’t mean anything when there are no tests available. The shortage is generating conditions such as only 45 out of the 3,500 people on board the Grand Princess cruise ship being tested for the disease; such as the governor of Missouri announcing that the state has tested “nearly 17” people; and incidents such as the one in which a nurse in California who suspected that she had been exposed was denied the option of being tested, even though she had dealt directly with confirmed cases.

The lack of testing materials may be artificially holding down the case count in the United States—something that has to please Donald Trump and a coronavirus task force filled with people like Larry Kudlow, whose thoughts are on anything but public health. “We would prefer a targeted approach, a rather micro approach,” said Kudlow. “Let’s think about individuals who might lose paychecks because they have to stay home if they get the virus. Let’s think about small businesses that might get hurt by this.”

Or … we could think about the $24 billion that Donald Trump paid out to farmers to compensate them for a disaster that he had manufactured and wonder why other people are being asked to literally lay down their lives rather than get support from their government.

The United States isn’t on the edge of an epidemic. It’s in the middle of one. The extent to which Trump and his team are trying to keep people working until they literally drop is baffling. Because whatever that is, it’s not a win.