“This spring, a team working under the president’s son-in-law produced a plan for an aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response that could have brought the pandemic under control. So why did the White House spike it in favor of a shambolic 50-state response?” is the opening question posed in a hell of a piece in Vanity Fair by Katherine Eban.
TLDR: Mostly because of incompetence, denial, and because the virus was hitting blue states the hardest in the earlier months.
It is long. But it’s worth reading.