PPI - Radically Pragmatic
  • Donate
Skip to content
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Locations
    • Careers
  • People
  • Projects
  • Our Work
  • Events
  • Donate

Our Work

Kane for Bloomberg: Would the U.S. Have Spotted Omicron as Fast as South Africa?

  • December 8, 2021
  • Arielle Kane

By Arielle Kane

President Joe Biden told Americans not to panic about the omicron Covid-19 variant because the U.S. has “the best vaccine in the world, the best medicines, [and] the best scientists.” What the U.S. doesn’t have, however, is the best data. Although the country’s virus DNA sequencing has improved, its data infrastructure still isn’t robust enough to handle this and future pandemics.

When Biden assumed office, the U.S. was sequencing the DNA and thus identifying the viral strains of roughly 8,000 positive Covid-19 tests a week. Ten months later, U.S. labs are sequencing about 80,000 a week. Last week that amounted to one in seven PCR tests. This isn’t enough.

Read the full piece in Bloomberg.

Related Work

Press Release  |  June 26, 2025

New PPI Report Finds GOP’s Medicaid Cuts Reckless and Wasteful

  • Alix Ware
Publication  |  June 26, 2025

The High Cost of Republican Medicaid “Savings”

  • Alix Ware
Blog  |  May 21, 2025

Republicans Surrender the War on Cancer

  • Alix Ware
Blog  |  May 19, 2025

The Media’s Misguided Coverage of Smoke-Free Nicotine Products

  • Lindsay Mark Lewis
Blog  |  December 9, 2024

Why the U.S. Senate Should Reject RFK Jr.

  • Daphne Hansell
Press Release  |  October 21, 2024

New PPI Report Proposes Solutions to Reduce Health Care Costs for Working Americans

  • Erin Delaney
  • Never miss an update:

  • Subscribe to our newsletter
PPI Logo
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Donate
  • Careers
  • © 2025 Progressive Policy Institute. All Rights Reserved.
  • |
  • Privacy Policy
  • |
  • Privacy Settings