In March, the president went into a lab and said,

every American who wants a test for the coronavirus can get one.

Anybody right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test, they're there.

They have the tests, and the tests are beautiful.

Was it true then?

It was definitely not true then.

This is Robinson Meyer, staff writer at the Atlantic.

We're talking in late August.

Is it true now?

So it's interesting now.

The country still definitely does not have enough tests.

And whenever there's a surge in cases, then everyone who wants a test is definitively

unable to get a test.

Normally, Robinson covers climate change and technology.

But like many of us, his attention this spring shifted to one thing, the pandemic.

He's written extensively about the testing shortages Americans have faced during this public

health crisis.

You know, we saw this in Arizona last month where not only were there not enough tests,

even to test everyone who was symptomatic, not only were there not enough tests to test

everyone who was asymptomatic and might have been exposed, there weren't enough test to test

doctors who were exposed or doctors who were symptomatic.

And what that meant was that healthcare workers, nurses, doctors, who had been exposed to the virus, had to just sit at home and wait seven, 10 days for a test to come back while their offices basically were short-staffed in the middle of the biggest public health crisis that Arizona has ever seen.

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