When the monkeypox outbreak was first detected in the United States, it seemed, as far as infectious-disease epidemics go, like one this country should be able to handle. Tests and antivirals for the virus already existed; the government had stockpiled vaccines. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox was a known entity, a relative softball on the pathogenic field. It wasn’t hypertransmissible, moving mainly through intimate contact during the disease’s symptomatic phase; previous epidemics had, with few interventions, rather quickly burned themselves out. The playbook was clear: Marshal U.S. resources and ensure they go to those most at risk, send aid abroad, and knock it out of the park. “If there was one virus that would lend itself to containment,” says Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, a virologist and infectious-disease physician at Emory University, this should have been it.

Two months later, global counts have crested above 21,000 confirmed cases, nearly a fourth of which are in the United States, which now ranks first among countries keeping track. Infections, most among men who have sex with men, have been documented in 46 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico; New York State and San Francisco have declared states of emergency, as has the World Health Organization, on a global scale. Controlling the virus isn’t yet out of reach, says Jay Varma, the director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response. But as the outbreak grows, so, too, does the challenge of combating it. “It didn’t have to be this hard,” Varma told me.

Years of similar snafus surrounding SARS-CoV-2—a far, far more difficult virus to fight—should have taught the U.S. something about its own weak points. Instead, the lackluster response to monkeypox is making clear that the country’s capacity to deal with infectious disease may be even worse than it was at the start of 2020. Monkeypox, the country’s second infectious crisis in three years, isn’t just an unfortunate fumble. It’s confirmation that, although the U.S. might have once seemed like one of nations best equipped to stop and prevent outbreaks, it is, in actuality, one of the best at squandering its potential instead.