Nobody Asked Me, But...
In which we consider the vainglory of Commissar Biden in seizing the entire supply of home COVID tests
The Exact Wrong Thing To Do
The latest episode of the popular series “Government Will Solve All Your Problems” came this week when President Biden announced that the government would be mailing out 500 million free COVID-19 home test kits.
I, along with all the other parents in Greenwich, have spent the few days in a fruitless search for testing appointments and home test kits. So the news that Comrade Biden has seized control of the entire productive capacity for COVID tests is really, ah, annoying.
He said the tests would be mailed out in January. Well, that falls pretty flat. Puts the kibosh on Christmas gatherings this year, at least those involving beloved elderly relatives.
Cases at my son’s high school have soared. My kid started to feel lousy last Friday and asked to be tested. He’s afraid to see his relatives for fear of passing along the virus.
When every parent in Greenwich starts looking for test sites and home tests, what do you think happens?
On Friday, I found a private clinic that had next-day appointments available at $300 for a rapid test — or at least they did until we finally decided to eat that cost.
The local hospital has no appointments until after Christmas.
The school advised using the new home tests, but the local CVS stores have none in stock. A private pharmacy here in town told me that yes, kits would be available the next day at $79 per test, four times the quoted rate on Amazon. I placed an order on Amazon two days ago, but it still hasn’t shipped.
While I was frantically searching for tests, the geniuses at the White House were cooking up a scheme that made everything infinitely worse. After Tuesday’s announcement, everyone pretty much gave up. Greenwich High School shut down for winter break a day early.
Does anyone believe that White House intervention going to help?
Even if the promised 500 million tests go out in January — what’s going to happen until then? And 500 million, although it sounds like a big number, won’t nearly meet the need. How many tests will be necessary to stop the spread? You’re exposed via a close contact, you take a test; you have symptoms, you take a test; you quarantine, you take another test…
My son would need to take a test every week so he could spend his regular weekend with his father.
Biden could have acted in other ways. He could have directed the postal service to help speed shipping. He could even have offered to reimburse pharmacies. But no, he had to set up an entire infrastructure as the virus raged.
The irony is — and as my friend Rodney Perdew has so rightly observed, the fabric of the universe is irony — the omicron variant that is flying around so rapidly is a mild form of COVID. It’s like the flu! As of Tuesday, only one person has died!
Yet the government has cornered the market for test kits — not for monetary profit, at least not directly, but out of a perverse desire to look powerful.
Amazing, isn’t it, after all that transpired in spring 2020 — remember the sudden, inexplicable shortages of masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, paper towels, toilet paper?
When Russian emigres gather, they regale their listeners with stories about central planning-era shortages. My friend Oksana has one about standing all night in the snow to buy a pair of Canadian boots, since the Russian ones were so lousy.
Give us back our supply chain, Commissar Biden. Our pharmacies were working beautifully before your unwelcome intervention.
Laurel Kenner is a professional editor. Her views are entirely her own.