Testing was not only
an issue, it was
the issue, at least for the first wave. Our playbook focuses a lot on how important surveillance data (testing) are - flying blind into a pandemic is not the way to do it. And I don't know anyone who doesn't know that developing and deploying infectious disease testing is a Federal Government responsibility. Sure, the states eventually own it, but in Feb/March, the states were screaming for working test kits as they feared what was coming and all they got was delay after delay. Five months in, I would imagine testing is jointly owned, so the problems we're still having likely depend on the state - just not sure on that.
With regard to right wing/conservative people, though, it's clear that R's are far less likely to wear masks than D's, as per the Pew Research poll I posted about a week ago (pic below) and since transmission is a numbers game, less mask wearing in any group is going to result in more infections in that group, especially if they're congregating with other like-minded people, which would be expected. It certainly doesn't mean all R's are "bad" and all C's are "good" with regard to masks, but the numbers do matter. I'd also rather not even have this be an issue, but the POTUS made it an issue by repeatedly mocking mask wearers and refusing to wear a mask - if he had said what he said this week about masks for the last 3.5 months, my guess is we wouldn't have a divide in opinions on masks and we'd have signficantly fewer 2nd wave cases and deaths.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politic...e-even-further-apart-in-coronavirus-concerns/