It's Time to Build
by Marc Andreessen
Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, but its not too early to ask why, and what we need to do about it.
Many of us would like to pin the cause on one political party or another, on one government or another. But the harsh reality is that it all failed no Western country, or state, or city was prepared and despite hard work and often extraordinary sacrifice by many people within these institutions. So the problem runs deeper than your favorite political opponent or your home nation.
Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didnt *do* in advance, and what were failing to do now. And that is a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to *build*.
We see this today with the things we urgently need but dont have. We dont have enough coronavirus tests, or test materials including, amazingly, cotton swabs and common reagents. We dont have enough ventilators, negative pressure rooms, and ICU beds. And we dont have enough surgical masks, eye shields, and medical gowns as I write this, New York City has put out a desperate call for rain ponchos to be used as medical gowns. Rain ponchos! In 2020! In America!
Read more:
https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/