In a little more than a week, the nationwide baby formula shortage has gone from barely registering with the American public to prompting the federal government to announce urgent steps to alleviate the shortage, perhaps the most significant of which came Wednesday after President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act.
Though the steps taken over the past week have been encouraging, I’m still wondering why it took this long to finally address the writing on the wall that had been up for over a year. Judging from FDA chief Robert Califf’s apparent inability to explain the cause of the shortage this morning, it seems as though we’ll be wondering for quite some time. Meanwhile, it won’t surprise you to know that Republicans have seized on the current crisis to attack Biden, and it’s my belief that some of these criticisms have been legitimate. As I wrote previously: