Editors at the Washington Free Beacon rebut liberal commentators’ complaints about the American response to the coronavirus.

Temporarily consigned to their homes, liberal commentators and politicians have fallen back on a favorite time-wasting activity: America bashing. …

… To be fair, the Trump administration was slow to respond. Bureaucratic sclerosis at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set testing back by weeks, and the president’s early statements downplaying the disease were irresponsible at best.

But the excitement that greets each dire chart from the Financial Times shows that for many on the left, the virus confirms what they always believed: that the only way America is exceptional is in its incompetence and viciousness. …

… Forget that the United States is about the same size as Europe, meaning country-scale comparisons are meaningless. Forget also that China and Iran are almost certainly lying about their tallies—lies the media often repeat unquestioningly. The problem with the new liberal view, we believe, is that it disregards the distinctly American resolve that now fuels our response, and that has always made America exceptional. …

… We once built planes; now we make tests. In just a month, America has gone from a few thousand tested to over 2.2 million. We are on pace to do a million more every week. Germany is testing about a third as many people; South Korea, 10 times fewer. The United States is larger, and so has further to go, but the growth of its testing regime is breathtaking.

American ingenuity, meanwhile, lifts the world on its shoulders. The most promising antiviral treatment, remdesivir, is made by Gilead Sciences, the American firm whose groundbreaking HIV and Hepatitis C treatments already help millions. Vaccines, too, are American-made, with half of the 78 in development being produced in North American laboratories. When a vaccine comes, America will be ready to churn it out.

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