‘Heavy Hand of Government’ Is Just What Crisis Needs
Using the Defense Production Act to obtain critical equipment and coordinate supplies is simple common sense.
Hands-off approach.
Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
“We are getting what we want without the heavy hand of government,” said Peter Navarro, the White House economist who’s been put in charge of speeding up the manufacture of medical equipment that hospitals need so desperately.
It was around 6:30 Sunday night when Navarro made that remark, about a third of the way through the White House’s daily coronavirus press briefing. It struck me as a fitting end to one of the most anxiety-ridden weekends of my life, comparable, I suspect, to the way my parents must have felt during the Cuban missile crisis. My wife, Dawn, has a relative living in New York, a young health-care professional who has been working around the clock since the coronavirus hit the city. She called us Saturday to say that she was feeling feverish and tired — she thought she might have Covid-19. She had put herself in self-quarantine and was being tested on Monday. Her father was sending her toilet paper from Wisconsin.