Trump Broke the Agencies That Were Supposed To Stop the Covid-19 Epidemic

This week, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams promised that we're entering the darkest days of the Covid-19 epidemic: "This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment. Only, it's not going to be localized, it's going to be happening all over the country. And I want America to understand that," Adams told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

Adams' metaphor, evoking the two deadliest-and most shocking-moments of modern American history, came on the fourth consecutive day that U.S. deaths from Covid-19 crossed the 1,000 mark. Across Saturday, Sunday and Monday, more Americans were killed by the novel coronavirus than in either Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 attacks or the Civil War battle of Antietam. The days ahead surely will include an even grimmer toll.

Yet Adams' metaphor of this as our new "9/11 moment" is more apt than he likely intended: Comparing the events is about more than just a story of casualties-it is also a story about government's failure. Both Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks occurred, in part, because the U.S. government and intelligence failed to see the attacks looming. We were caught unprepared, and Americans paid for that mistake with their lives.