Nothing spotlights problems like a crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown disruptions into almost every aspect of our lives during the past five months. Each twist and turn became a test for some system or another, especially the government structures we so often ignore until we need them.

Some stumbled, but eventually stepped up to an unprecedented task.

Others’ failings will become catalyst for long-needed changes.

The list of necessary reforms grows daily, and if our government works as we imagine it should, policy makers will busy themselves for years to come rethinking, redesigning and rebuilding.

We hope first on that list will be the system of oversight that fails to provide proper protections for vulnerable adults even under normal circumstances. We have witnessed frustrating and continued failures of state and federal overseers to detect and contain the spread of COVID-19 into nursing homes.

The most egregious moves to date were decisions made by Michigan Department of Health and Human Services officials to transfer recovering COVID-19 patients into nursing home and long-term care facilities to recover. That choice came long before state officials acknowledged what had already been exposed in several other states — nursing homes and the people who live in them are particularly vulnerable to the pandemic.

Even then, it took months for state overseers to begin requiring nursing homes to test residents and staff for COVID-19.

This week, we learned the state has settled for equally lax oversight of similarly vulnerable adults — those who live in adult foster care homes.

During the past two years, Record-Eagle reporters have exposed gross inadequacies in the state’s oversight of such homes. Overloaded case workers and investigators. Infrequent inspections. And a disconnect between state agencies that allows AFC home operators to house parolees in close proximity to vulnerable adults.

Those revelations all predated the pandemic. And none were remedied prior to its arrival.

A system that under ordinary circumstances appears to be little more than an afterthought to state policy drivers continues to fall outside their attention in the midst of a crisis.

Operators of AFC homes say guidance from regulators has been sparse and confusing during the pandemic. And unlike nursing homes, adult care homes haven’t received any mandate to test either residents or staff for COVID-19.

Considering more than 30 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Michigan so far have been nursing home residents and staff, it seems like common sense to test and monitor the equally vulnerable adults who live in the state’s adult foster care facilities.

We are left wondering how Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, MDHHS officials, and state lawmakers plan to protect our state’s overlooked vulnerable adults. Will they learn from failures in handling infections in nursing homes? Will they act quickly and transparently to prevent deaths? Will they act to fix a system that so obviously was broken long before the COVID-19?

Nobody should be happy with the clumsy machinations we’ve seen in the state’s reaction to infections spreading in nursing homes. Still, we can hope politicians and bureaucrats have learned something from the ongoing disaster they helped create.

The pandemic didn’t create the systemic problems that during the past few months have become so magnified, but we hope it will be the catalyst for meaningful change.

— Traverse City Record-Eagle