No, it's worse. It devolved into a political institution. Any academic institution would have trivially been able to get the PCR test right (and academic institutions did). Bur our agencies gave into political pressures, were defunded and declared in critical moments, etc, leading to the failure of the federal government we see now
People don't like getting fired, blame the politicians for threatening and firing anyone who disagrees with them, don't blame the people whose jobs were in jeopardy.
This same thing happened here in the UK (with similar results). Scientists scared of being ostracised if they spoke against the government. So they just went along with all the dumb decisions. We also have an group of scientists ‘Sage’ who are meant to be our best minds, who gave similarly useless and inconsistent advice because it was politicised.
There was an interview with one of the scientists who laid it all out. He has terminal cancer himself and therefore said he doesn’t care about future access.
While I think that politicians are primary people to blame, I dont think the "I was afraid for my job" is good enough answer from high level leadership figures. That answer is acceptable from janitor or low level worker.
I think that culturally, both in business and in politics, we are locked in set of values that makes opposition or disagreement against someone higher in hierarchy or with power as inappropriate and subservience as virtue. It then amounts to massive system of enablers who feel good about themselves and even criticize non-enablers wherever narcissist appears.
We praise people who manage to climb the ladder no matter how they got there and what they do there. We devalue people who make ethical decisions when said decision hurts their career.
