The most remarkable part of Rick Bright’s testimony: His claims about the government’s lack of COVID-19 preparedness went largely uncontested, even by the president’s allies. Russell Berman writes in The Atlantic that it was a single, salty sentence that first made Rick Bright realize a pandemic crisis was coming: “We’re in deep shit.” Those four words, punctuated by the profanity, also neatly summarize Bright’s stark message to Congress over the course of his four-hour testimony: The United States dropped the ball early in the pandemic, and it remains woefully unprepared for the painful months to come. “Lives were endangered,” he said, “and I believe lives were lost.” Without a significantly improved federal response, Bright told lawmakers, “2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history.”