France’s testing weakness shows challenges of lifting lockdowns https://www.ft.com/content/391e9ea6-fb1c-4d95-837f-9495508ed91b?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6 I wish officials--everywhere--would tell the truth about why they're failing to perform.

It is *not* true, as Olivier Véran said, that securing test kits was “complicated for every country in the world." Or at least, not true that it's so complicated they can't do it. The public should hear the truth, which doesn't even reflect a failure of this government--

Germany was able to develop and manufacture tests before everyone else in Europe because it's a manufacturing and biotech powerhouse. It *makes* all the reagents and other things you need for test kits. It's not dependent on China for them.

Here's a good article explaining why Germany was able to do what France, the UK, and (astonishingly), the US can't manage to do: https://reaction.life/why-is-germany-able-to-test-for-coronavirus-so-much-more-than-the-uk/.

This phenomenon has distinct historic roots:

It goes back to the C19th, and no French policy maker now is responsible for it, so why not tell the truth? When Britain went through the industrial revolution (first), it developed a comparative advantage in producing coal, iron, and textiles.

Germany, hot on its heels, the went through the so-called Second Industrial Revolution, focused on chemicals, engineering, and technical manufacturing. Germany still retains this advantage. France had an unusual industrialization trajectory;

it wasn't populous enough to develop the way Germany did. Its chemical and biotech sector is and has always been built on innovation and R&D, rather than sheer heft. Britain became a trading superpower (and developed a comparative advantage in financial and services industries).

Countries that have a comparative advantage in "sheer heft" biotech--like Germany--now produce the reagents you need to test for Covid-19 at scale. France has nothing to be ashamed of, here: It has the third-largest biotech sector in Europe, after Germany and the UK.

It's world class, but it specializes in clinical trials and innovative research. In this regard, it's ahead of Germany: It has more new products in the pipeline. Per Scimago, of the world's top-five healthcare research institutions, two are in the US, two in China; one in France.

France is more likely to develop the vaccine than Germany. But Germany is the reagent powerhouse. SARS-COV-2 is an RNA virus, so you need two enzymes, in particular, to make a test--reverse transcriptase to convert RNA to DNA, and polymerase for the polymerase chain reaction.

You have to produce these molecules (in some kind of bacteria soup, I think? @DrJohnTurner?), then purify them. Usually, demand for these enzymes is low and absolutely predictable. Ramp up too fast, you get quality-control problems, which in a situation like this is *bad.*

You also need a lot of other manufactured goods: extraction kits, primers, probes. If you need to go shopping for those things, here's your supermarket: https://biopharmguy.com/links/country-germany-all-location.php.

Why wouldn't you explain this forthrightly to French citizens, instead of saying, "every country is having this problem?" Why suggest that everyone is dependent on China? Neither are true, and there's no shame in the real explanation.