Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer believes that the lack of a unified federal approach to the coronavirus pandemic has made things worse. The states are on their own, she told Fox News on Sunday, which has created a “more porous situation” that has allowed the virus to spread.
“I’m grateful for the help that we’ve gotten,” Whitmer told Fox News on Sunday, but “not having a national strategy where there is one policy for the country as opposed to a patchwork based on who the governor is” simply is not sustainable, she added.
In some respects, Whitmer is right — especially when it comes to testing. To better control the spread of the virus and begin to reopen the country, the United States needs to be testing at least 750,000 people per week, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. We’re close to reaching that goal — a mix of public and private labs are executing close to 100,000 tests nationwide per day — but the slow pace of early testing is still affecting some parts of the country.
What Whitmer has identified as the problem, however, might just be the solution.
That “patchwork” of independent states Whitmer complained about is the only thing standing in between us and the federal government’s incompetence. Indeed, it was this “patchwork,” otherwise known as federalism, that allowed the states to mobilize and respond quickly, despite the federal government’s early testing failures. Hot spots such as California and Washington were able to implement containment strategies without waiting for the rest of the country. As a result, it’s likely that they’ve seen fewer spikes in confirmed cases and deaths than, say, the East Coast.
Federalism is also the best tool we have. It is clear the virus is spreading at different speeds in different places across the U.S., which means that what’s needed in New York is not what’s needed in Arizona, and what Michigan is experiencing may not be applicable to Montana. A “national strategy” would only lessen the states’ abilities to meet the individual needs of their citizens.
The federal government’s primary responsibility right now is outfitting the states with the funding, supplies, and manpower necessary to combat the virus. The governors, then, must directly apply these resources in a way that adequately addresses their states’ varying outbreaks. Whitmer might not think this is a strategy, but it is — and it’s also the one that works best.
