American "Leadership"

What happened to N95 masks? A CNN article suggests we could've ended the pandemic with the right protective equipment.

My take: our collective leadership prioritized criticizing the other side over resolving the pandemic.

Nationally, Trump administration gambled the farm on vaccines. Obviously, the vaccine push in Operation Warp Speed worked and was a smart move. But why can't we walk and chew gum? I don't understand how we didn't also push out a major effort to get out the good N95 masks into people's hands before this second wave hit. Why do we hear nothing about treatments? Why don't we have $1 tests that people can take at home? We are a rich nation of 350 million people. We gave away billions to keep the stock market afloat and people and businesses solvent. Couldn't we have spent that money on something productive? 

Locally, I don't even know what to say. I'm in California and LA and my impression of our leadership is that they don't actually care. I mean that. I don't think they care about opening schools. I don't think they care about people making a living. I think they DO care about the negative optics of hospitals overflowing. I think the only tool in their toolkit is taking draconian lockdown measures to make themselves look marginally better than Republican states. There's been no effort, as far as I can tell, to get public schools open. Meanwhile, my employer and my kid's daycare figured out strong plans for reopening that I believe are pretty safe - check temps, wear masks, lower the overall numbers in spaces. And these are not big organizations, nor were they equipped to handle the pandemic. But they figured it out because they have incentive to figure it out. The last piece of the pie would be daily testing. California often boasts of being the 6th largest economy on the planet with the most innovative companies in the world. We can't figure out daily tests?

The only priority of Californian leadership was to get Trump out of office. That's why we have the largest COVID numbers in the world right now. That's why we prioritized mail in ballots and lockdowns and hypocritical stances on varying forms of protest. That's why all the energy is focused on canceling people, etc. Because they don't care.