wp ed board:

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The consequences of this reversal may be tragic. The United States is already struggling with a stubbornly persistent 20,000 new infections a day, and more than 2,000 daily deaths. Many scientists and public health experts believe those numbers will spike thanks to the rushed restart.

There is a desperate need for adequate nationwide diagnostic testing and contact tracing so that offices and factories can cautiously begin to resume work without triggering more sickness. That, too, has been left to the scattered and uneven leadership of states and localities, which are unable to deliver at the scale needed. Their challenge is compounded by serial failures in the federal bureaucracy driven by Mr. Trump’s incompetent appointees. We now learn from the whistleblower complaint filed by a senior Health and Human Services official, Rick Bright, that when he warned a group of senior officials known as the Disaster Leadership Group on Feb. 7 about a shortfall of protective masks, other officials responded “there was no indication of a supply chain shortage or of issues with masks, and therefore there was no need to take immediate action.” Such missteps have been endemic.

[...] Mr. Trump not only does not know how to get there, but he also appears unwilling to seriously tackle the problem. We may soon see terrible consequences from his abdication.