Retrospectives about what went wrong initially are great. In fact they should mostly be about improvement, since this pandemic isn’t going to magically disappear, or even give us a break for the summer.

In Feb, March, and April things went wrong all over. At one point De Blasio’s best advice to subway riders was let crowded rush hour trains pass...as though an emptier one would follow behind at 7:45 am. Cuomo leaving infected patients in nursing homes, which his opponents want to crucify him for now.

We all operated in the dark. Now we know (or data strongly suggests) that mask wearing decreases spread. So we wear masks. We know lots of things that prevent us from doing the things we did in March. We learned lessons.

Unfortunately, the country now looks exactly as it did in late March and early April. Shortages of PPE, equipment like ventilators, hospital beds. Testing is woefully insufficient and wait times for results are apparently up, making tracing irrelevant. And testing and tracing are the biggest keys.

The pass granted policy makers for early ignorance has expired. Long ago. As for masks, Trump may finally be on board, but he continued to resist it long after guidance on its benefits changed. Long after pretty much everyone else. I hope he’s permanently changed and the rest of the insane national resistors will follow suit. But there is no elephant obscuring Trump’s record on this point.