CDC and/or FDA also banned everyone in the country from doing tests themselves.

And more importantly, the Administration never stepped in to fix it no matter how obvious a problem it was causing. It took them ages to have the FDA make an emergency exception to allow private testing.

actually reshaping FDA policy in the time they did is nothing short of miraculous. I know teams of 5 that can't change their way of doing things that fast.

> actually reshaping FDA policy in the time they did is nothing short of miraculous.

Yeah no. Not remotely. It was dead obvious. I think you're underestimating the influence a call from the head of the executive branch has. This was easily fixable weeks earlier.

The US could have used the WHO test in the meantime.

I've read that it couldn't. Those kits were never offered to the US: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/health/who-coronavirus-tests-...

couldn't? sounds like the US didn't even try asking. the article says: "No discussions occurred between WHO and the CDC about providing tests to the United States"

and

"US chose to design its own coronavirus test"