Testing

What happens when a government thinks it can distribute a consumer product more efficiently than normal retail channels? Boondoggle and failure come to mind. Two months ago, President Biden announced plans to buy 500 million at-home Covid test kits and mail them to anyone who wanted one. The Department of Defense put in orders for $1.275 billion of tests from iHealth, $340 million from Roche and $306 million from Abbott. How many tests those eye-popping figures bought from each company has never been disclosed, but Abbott, the largest test manufacturer, has a reported production capacity of 50 to 70 million tests. It is safe to assume that the quantities involved commanded an enormous portion of total manufacturing capacity.

"I am vaccinated — two Moderna shots, then boosted with a Pfizer booster," Fox News's Geraldo Rivera said as he announced he tested positive for Covid two weeks ago. "I thought for sure that I was immune...I ate some humble pie." The View's Whoopi Goldberg expressed similar surprise when she caught the virus, saying, "It was a shock, because I'm triple vaxxed, I haven't been anywhere, I haven't done anything." "It's one of those things where you think, I've done everything I was supposed to do... Yeah, it doesn't stop Omicron," she added. There have been scores of high-profile people admitting over the past month that you can "do everything right" and still catch Covid-19.

After months of yelling about how important at-home testing kits are, Joe Biden forgot to buy them. Oops! In his address on Tuesday, the president told Americans, “We also need to do better with at-home testing. So, I’m announcing today: the federal government will purchase one half billion — that’s not million; billion with a 'B' — additional at-home rapid tests, with deliveries starting in January.” But according to the New York Times, the half billion with a “B” tests are some ways out: “Mr. Biden’s administration has not yet signed a contract to buy the tests, and the website to order them will not be up until January.” The president’s potential successor Pete Buttigieg once wisely said that there are two kinds of Christmas shoppers.