How Government Red Tape Stymied Testing and Made the Coronavirus Epidemic Worse

The United States is home to the most innovative biotech companies and university research laboratories in the world. That fact should have given our country a huge advantage with respect to detecting and monitoring emerging cases of COVID-19 caused by the new coronavirus outbreak.

Instead, as The New York Times reports in a terrific new article, officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stymied private and academic development of diagnostic tests that might have provided an early warning and a head start on controlling the epidemic that is now spreading across the country.