In that convention speech, by the way, Biden promised, “We’ll develop and deploy rapid tests with results available immediately.” In his Covid plan, he slammed Trump for testing shortages and pledged to implement “widespread” testing and tracing.

Now that there’s a shortage of rapid tests and enormous lines of people desperately seeking tests, Biden explains that the latest wave moved too fast to get in front of. Whatever you think of this explanation, it’s the kind of thing Trump officials said at the outset of the pandemic. It goes to show that it’s possible to be earnest and well-intentioned — as all of Biden’s allies believe he is — and yet get caught flat-footed by the latest permutation of a once-in-a-century event.

This is the possibility that Biden and his supporters were never willing to admit existed while Trump was in office. The suffering and death were never attributed chiefly to the virus itself; the bureaucratic mistakes never attributed to well-meaning people struggling within outdated systems in trying circumstances; the policy disagreements never attributed to sincere differences about how best to try to get out of the pandemic and where the balance should be struck between restrictions to control the virus and their inevitable downsides.