A few months ago, President Biden, in an unprecedented move, announced to more than 80 million Americans that his “patience is wearing very thin” as he issued a mandate requiring a large portion of the American workforce to test weekly, or submit to COVID vaccinations as a condition of employment.

We now know, thanks to Sen. Collins’ questioning of the head of the FDA, at that very same time, the Biden administration stopped ordering COVID tests, and instead, shifted $1.7 billion allocated to purchase and stockpile rapid tests to respond to the crisis created by his administration at our southern border. As a result, Americans were faced with going through the holidays without access to testing, and now the COVID pandemic is surging in this state and across the country.

As Sen. Collins said in Washington, “This testing crisis appears to have been entirely preventable, as is evidenced by the availability, the widespread availability, of rapid tests in Europe.”

I would take Sen. Collins’ assessment a step further to say that both the crises (lack of access to mandated tests and the crisis at the southern border) were entirely predictable and avoidable.

I would like to thank Sen. Collins for her diligent research, and for her continued attention to these important matters. Americans deserve, and should demand, her level of leadership at the highest level. People’s lives, and livelihoods, are on the line.

David M. Whitney

Marshfield