[BostonCard]

We are a federal Republic, and the response should work accordingly.  Contact tracing should be based locally; you need people on the ground, interviewing contacts, enforcing isolation (which necessarily has to be done locally), and is best done by local public health departments.
That being said, because a strict travel ban between states is both inadvisable (the food supply, for one, needs to be able to flow between states, and as bad as the shutdown is to local economies, a lockdown of inter-state commerce exacerbate the economic impact), and would be difficult to enforce, you need coordination on a federal level.  This is a fast moving crisis, and it helps for the federal government to help foster best practices among the states.

You can criticize states all you want for under-funding their public health institutions, but the way our federal health system is set up, there is a strong disincentive to invest a lot of money in preparedness "just in case".  For better or worse, states compete between each other to attract jobs and residents on the basis of taxes and service provided; preparedness costs money but doesn't provide a visible benefit during normal times.  Moreover, most states are required by law to balance their budgets, and are going to be facing a massive financial hole due to both decreased revenues from the economic hit and increased expenditures fighting the pandemic and its economic sequelae.

The federal government can step into the breach here, as it has a very large capacity for budget deficits and to issue debt.  Moreover, it is appropriate to do so, since Californians benefit from minimizing infections in New York, since New Yorkers can fly or drive to California and bring coronavirus with them.  Yes, the pandemic is based on a bunch of local epidemics, but there is enough cross-talk between localities that it does no good to quench the pandemic in one location if it is raging in another.

In addition, a federal stockpile of critical therapy (ventilators) and protective equipment makes a lot of sense.  In most disasters (for example, Katrina), the challenge is regional, so the federal government can efficiently deploy the equipment to regions at need it.  Even within Covid-19, the pandemic is hitting regions heterogeneously, and there is some temporal differences between when regions will have peak requirements, so a federal response, which can deploy resources strategically to areas that are in highest need, and then redeploy them after the wave reseeds.
Furthermore, if states are left to their own devices to procure equipment in the midst of the crisis, they are basically competing with one another.  A unified federal procurement system with strategic deployment makes more sense for this reason.

Your point about the federal government being all powerful is well taken, but the federal government can at least be transparent.  Instead of blaming the states for an inadequate stockpile, it would be preferable to say, "here are the number of ventilators we have in the stockpile, here is how they are deployed, here are the numbers we are using to make the calculations of how to deploy them, and here is what we are doing to get more."  In a time of crisis, clear and transparent communication is paramount, and we have seen conflicting messages, misleading statements, which, frankly have been dangerous. The system will work best when the federal government and the state governments complement each other, instead of fighting one another.

BC

[BostonCard]

We are a federal Republic, and the response should work accordingly.  Contact tracing should be based locally; you need people on the ground, interviewing contacts, enforcing isolation (which necessarily has to be done locally), and is best done by local public health departments.
That being said, because a strict travel ban between states is both inadvisable (the food supply, for one, needs to be able to flow between states, and as bad as the shutdown is to local economies, a lockdown of inter-state commerce exacerbate the economic impact), and would be difficult to enforce, you need coordination on a federal level.  This is a fast moving crisis, and it helps for the federal government to help foster best practices among the states.

You can criticize states all you want for under-funding their public health institutions, but the way our federal health system is set up, there is a strong disincentive to invest a lot of money in preparedness "just in case".  For better or worse, states compete between each other to attract jobs and residents on the basis of taxes and service provided; preparedness costs money but doesn't provide a visible benefit during normal times.  Moreover, most states are required by law to balance their budgets, and are going to be facing a massive financial hole due to both decreased revenues from the economic hit and increased expenditures fighting the pandemic and its economic sequelae.

The federal government can step into the breach here, as it has a very large capacity for budget deficits and to issue debt.  Moreover, it is appropriate to do so, since Californians benefit from minimizing infections in New York, since New Yorkers can fly or drive to California and bring coronavirus with them.  Yes, the pandemic is based on a bunch of local epidemics, but there is enough cross-talk between localities that it does no good to quench the pandemic in one location if it is raging in another.

In addition, a federal stockpile of critical therapy (ventilators) and protective equipment makes a lot of sense.  In most disasters (for example, Katrina), the challenge is regional, so the federal government can efficiently deploy the equipment to regions at need it.  Even within Covid-19, the pandemic is hitting regions heterogeneously, and there is some temporal differences between when regions will have peak requirements, so a federal response, which can deploy resources strategically to areas that are in highest need, and then redeploy them after the wave reseeds.
Furthermore, if states are left to their own devices to procure equipment in the midst of the crisis, they are basically competing with one another.  A unified federal procurement system with strategic deployment makes more sense for this reason.

Your point about the federal government being all powerful is well taken, but the federal government can at least be transparent.  Instead of blaming the states for an inadequate stockpile, it would be preferable to say, "here are the number of ventilators we have in the stockpile, here is how they are deployed, here are the numbers we are using to make the calculations of how to deploy them, and here is what we are doing to get more."  In a time of crisis, clear and transparent communication is paramount, and we have seen conflicting messages, misleading statements, which, frankly have been dangerous. The system will work best when the federal government and the state governments complement each other, instead of fighting one another.

BC