Joe Biden's dishonest COVID testing promise

This past Tuesday, Joe Biden told the USA that he'd quickly flood the market with 500,000,000 COVID tests. According to this NYTimes article, that statement isn't the truth. They reported "President Biden promised Americans he is making 500 million coronavirus tests available free of charge, but help is at least weeks away, if not longer, for anxious Americans facing a surge of new virus cases."

Before getting into this reporting, it's worth noting that the Biden administration isn't famous for getting things done expeditiously. This article quotes Adm. Brett Giroir as saying "I’d give [Biden] a C-minus on this address. He certainly had some important messages. I do want to emphasize that whether you’ve been infected before or had two vaccines, with omicron, it’s important to be vaccinated." Then he dropped the hammer:

Everything else is really I think a drop in the bucket. 500 million tests over how many months -- is that going to be done? There’s no triage about who should get the tests? We clearly need to allocate them to the most needed. At the end of the Trump administration, we did 180 million free tests. The only reason why we’re in such a problem right now is that the Biden administration did not invest in testing between January and September.
Back to the NYTimes article reporting:
Mr. Biden’s administration has not yet signed a contract to buy the tests, and the website to order them will not be up until January. Officials have not said how many tests people will be able to order or how quickly they will be shipped once they begin to be available next month. Manufacturers say they are already producing tests as fast as they can.
Mr. Biden isn't running a well-oiled ship. Then again, I didn't expect that from him. For 50 years in politics, he's been either a bloviator or a bystander. This is his first time as an administrator. Anticipation isn't one of Mr. Biden's strong suits. Then there's this:
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday blamed a lack of demand for coronavirus testing earlier this year on the lack of supply for tests now as the omicron variant of the virus causes cases to spike nationwide and Americans are traveling for Christmas.
Ms. Psaki apparently isn't aware that there's nothing wrong with stockpiling testing kits during a pandemic. That's a mistake the Trump administration didn't make. That isn't something that Trump would've allowed. It's something that Peter Navarro or Mr. Pence would've tolerated. Here's how Mrs. Psaki responded to a question about the testing kit shortage:

What a snotty attitude. 'Should we just send kits to everyone?' is Ms. Psaki's reply to Mara Liasson. This administration should've kept ordering tests. That way, the manufacturers would've kept manufacturing them. Now, they have to ramp up production.

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