Coronavirus and the Failure of Big Government, Part IV

Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared headlines and tweets to illustrate how bureaucratic inefficiency and incompetence have hindered an effective response to the coronavirus.

Time to beat that dead horse one more time.

But not just for the sake of mocking the clowns in Washington. I want to help people understand that we would get better outcomes with a slimmed-down public sector that focused on genuine governmental responsibilities.

Before providing a comprehensive collection of headlines and tweets, please read these excerpts from a searing indictment of the federal government’s incompetence, written by Stephen Pimentel for Palladium.

The FDA’s poor performance has little to do with insufficient budgets… The countries with the most effective responses… Taiwan, for example, has relied on a decentralized set of quickly developed digital tools, coordinated by its DIGI+ digital ministry but developed on the fly by private citizens. ….None of these countries allowed their equivalents of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to block virus-testing and the production of masks. In the U.S., the FDA possesses exclusive authority to approve tests once the Department of Health and Human Services declares a Public Health Emergency, which it did on January 31, 2020. The FDA proceeded to grant such approval only to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In February, the CDC developed a test on its own and distributed it to state labs. But the test kits had a bad reagent and did not work. During the entire month of February, as the virus continued to spread, the FDA granted no private lab approval to test. The first approval for a private lab was only issued on March 2, 2020. …Why have common surgical masks (and not only the higher-grade N95 masks) run short during the pandemic? Surely they are easy to produce. The answer is that, while they are physically easy to produce, the FDA treats them as regulated medical devices and requires extensive risk analysis and testing before they can be legally sold, making them difficult and time-consuming for a company to legally bring to market. …The American institutions charged with protecting public health are embedded in a bureaucratic culture that values turf-centered gatekeeping and control over effectiveness and outcome.

Now for our collection of headlines and tweets.

And we’ll start with the one that carries the main message of today’s column.

And why are people needlessly suffering? And even dying?

Well, feel free to click on any of these stories and tweets to access the underlying information.

FDA finally allows use of KN95 masks. They should have done this a month ago.https://t.co/Y0bmfiQSWB

— Paul Graham (@paulg) April 3, 2020

The federal government 1) blocks distillers from bulk production of non-retail sanitizer, so "approved" products aren't there for the public, and 2) blocks import of perfectly good masks because bureaucratic boxes haven't been checked. Please fix this, @realDonaldTrump.

— Kurt Couchman (@KurtCouchman) April 3, 2020

COVID-19 preparedness

With Trump's trade war tariffs of 25%, the American health care system was forced to reduce by 16% its purchases of critical medical supplies and stockpiles from China in 2019.
https://t.co/ZpGwEuAGQA

— Chad P. Bown (@ChadBown) March 30, 2020

While the FDA and CDC deserve plenty of scorn and criticism, Let’s not forget that states augment the damage of big government thanks to misguided “certificate of need” laws that restrict the capacity of the health sector, as well as laws against so-called price gouging.

Certificate of Need laws have restricted the proliferation of hospitals and surgicenters in many states. This Coronavirus crisis has showed us that central planning can be deadly. End CON laws. @SurgeryCenterOK @AAPSonline @HConomics @StephenMoore @marklevinshow @JediPD

— Alieta Eck, MD (@AlietaEck) March 30, 2020

Tyler is of course right:

The need to "comply with the law" is costing lives:https://t.co/VKNXv6gL19 pic.twitter.com/wSSSnoIjQo

— Megatesting Fan Account (@GarettJones) April 2, 2020

The same problem exists to varying degrees in other nations, and also with international bureaucracies.

This is the strongest statistical association I've seen w/ respect to the virus. Wear a mask, mandate others to wear masks, & remember that @WHO is criminally incompetent. To repeat:@WHO is criminally incompetent.

PS-Don't get into elevators, buses, etc. unless your mask in N95 https://t.co/ZCkl3hql9K

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) March 31, 2020

Why does the WHO keep misinforming the public?

– The WHO said the coronavirus couldn't be transmitted from person to person.
– The WHO says masks don't protect anyone or prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
– The WHO advised against shutting borders and canceling flights.

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 31, 2020

NEW REPORT: 'Testing Times: The urgent need to decentralise COVID-19 diagnostic testing in the United Kingdom' by our @matthewlesh makes the case for allowing private, university and charity labs to test for COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/lvXPDepzIu

— Adam Smith Institute (@ASI) April 1, 2020

So what’s today’s message? Here’s a blunt headline that applies to national red tape, local red tape, and global red tape.

That lesson is captured by this image from the Atlas Society.

Once again, we have an answer to the question first asked back in 2009.

P.S. The bad news shared above doesn’t even count the deadly impact of the FDA’s lengthy and expensive process for approving new drugs.