The US could have ramped up production, but politics and regulation prevented it. The CDC and FDA prevented any private companies from producing their own tests

The US could have ramped up production, but politics and regulation prevented it. The CDC and FDA prevented any private companies from producing their own tests and in the meantime the CDC made their own small batch of tests that weren’t even accurate. If the president had taken the outbreak seriously we could have begun test production immediately, which is what South Korea did the moment they heard about the outbreak. This is largely due to systems put in place during and after the SARS and MERS outbreaks.