Big Government Has Hurt Our Ability to Deal with This Crisis

The middle of a pandemic is not the easiest time to argue for limited government. As The Atlantic put it a few days ago, “There are no libertarians in a pandemic.” Indeed, this is precisely the time when we want government to do certain things, and many of those things involve a vigorous and active government (not to mention a competent one). I’m quite comfortable with the government providing testing and requiring or at least facilitating social distancing, to cite just a couple of examples.

Yet before we swing too far from “government shouldn’t do anything” to “government should do everything,” it is worth taking stock of all the ways in which big government has contributed to making this outbreak worse.

The government’s most obvious failure so far has been the slowness of testing. The Trump administration’s failure to recognize the urgency of the situation was undoubtedly a contributing factor. But a bigger issue was red tape, bureaucracy, and over-caution on the part of regulatory agencies. Notably, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention insisted on creating its own diagnostic kit, rather than adopt those already available from other sources, such as the World Health Organization, which had made kits available to more than 60 countries.