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I think part of it may be intentional. No matter what, and the end, you will get accurate numbers for death, and there's not much that can be done for viral inf

I think part of it may be intentional. No matter what, and the end, you will get accurate numbers for death, and there's not much that can be done for viral infections, other than cancelling large events and other means of transmission. Some can't be avoided though (elections are happening in the US). Could the CDC intentionally be avoiding increasing testing to avoid panic? If the numbers are to be believed, no matter what we'll see a sizable number of infected this year and risk losing many of the elderly.

nerdponx 7y ago
Could the CDC intentionally be avoiding increasing testing to avoid panic? If the numbers are to be believed, no matter what we'll see a sizable number of infected this year and risk losing many of the elderly. This is the only logical explanation at this point. Or you can replace "avoid panic" with "avoid bad press for Trump".
- DuskStar 7y ago
  "A US government agency massively dropped the ball" should always be a possibility to consider. Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    Both things are likely true here. Also recall that incompetence in the CDC likely stems from politically-motivated firings and funding cuts in 2018.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      The 2018 funding cuts to the CDC weren't really "cuts" as much as they were the expiry of a 5-year emergency grant to fight Ebola. If it was meant to continue forever, perhaps it shouldn't have been passed as emergency funding... I don't think you're wrong about the firings though.
yongjik 7y ago
If China thought the same way, we'd be seeing a hundred million patients by now, accompanied by a breakdown of social order. Clearly China didn't think so, so they clamped down on the disease as hard as possible (albeit after missing the initial warning), and they have the disease somewhat under control. Same is happening in South Korea, Italy, and other places.
IIAOPSW 7y ago
I for one have full faith in the United States government to handle the situation competently and expediently. Facetiousness aside, that doesn't sound like the CDC. "Hide the numbers even from ourselves and hope it goes away" is the antithesis of what a scientist stands for. No way someone at the CDC wants that as official policy. But you know who has tons of influence over policy, an estranged relation with objective facts, a disdain for experts, values the perception of a good economy over everything, and is worried about re-election this year? Call me excessively partisan / bringing politics into it / whatever else. The danger here needs to be stated and I don't care what it makes me look like. Trump and his surrogates have already made public statements suggesting Corona virus isn't real, is a hoax, is a ploy by democrats to crash the economy etc. This is a guy who fudges numbers even on trivial things like the size of his inauguration crowd. He already calls all news that makes him look bad "fake". Why wouldn't he give an order to keep the true infectious numbers hidden? Maybe not a direct order to fudge the numbers, but certainly by way of proxy like limiting the amount of testing.
- zaroth 7y ago
  The CDC screwed up the tests all by themselves, even the final primers they are using are questionable. Combined with the FDA blocking local labs from testing based on bad regulations, the government screwed up the initial response just fine without any help from Trump. Trump says anyone who wants to be tested can get tested and the CDC says they just shipped a couple million test kits around the country. As usual, don’t blame as malice what can be adequately described as incompetence.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > Trump says anyone who wants to be tested can get tested Which was an entirely false claim at the time he said it.
  - alasdair_ 7y ago
    Despite the claims that we would have a million test kits out by last Friday, we don’t have them. Hell, the people in the Kirkland home that is the biggest source of deaths STILL have not all been tested - today they finally got more test kits - 45 test kits for 63 untested patients and dozens of staff. We are being lied to.
Alex3917 7y ago
> there's not much that can be done for viral infections There is a ton of research suggesting it's possible to reduce your risk of death by like 99%. There was metastudy on the front page of HN a couple days ago suggesting that vitamin D3 alone can reduce your risk of death by like 50% for those who are otherwise deficient. The most recent Cochrane review on Vitamin C suggests that that alone can reduce your risk of death from pneumonia by like 80%. Those aren't even the only things you can do before getting the virus. And once you get the virus there are like 6 different steps by which it kills you, and there are various things you can take to ameliorate what is happening at each step. Viruses can replicate up to once a minute, so if you've already been letting it replicate inside you for a couple weeks before taking something to block viral replication then taking something to do that isn't going to do anything after the fact, but it's absolutely a misconception to say that there's nothing we can do for fighting viruses.
- peter303 7y ago
  lots of fake news out there
graeme 7y ago
> No matter what, and the end, you will get accurate numbers for death Not necessarily. You only get accurate numbers for deaths if you test deaths. Some countries reporting zero cases may have had deaths that will never be reported. The US likely has also had unreported deaths.
peter303 7y ago
No, the CDC created a defective first kit, delaying EFFECTIVE national testing a month. Congress should investigate the reason for this failure. We'd be far ahead if we bought test from Germany or Korea. NPR had a story about genomics lab that repurposed some of it research equipment to provide some testing resources. Apparently about 70 other labs, including Gate's, did similar and provide backup resources. But a month delay seriously damaged the US response.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  The US also explicitly rejected the working German tests, adopted by the WHO, and continued pursuing their own kit, even after they failed the first go around, putting ourselves even further behind: > But German researchers were devising their own test, which was quickly adopted by the World Health Organization for distribution around the world. After the C.D.C.’s version turned out to be flawed, the agency continued to pursue it, despite the fact that another diagnostic test was already in wide use. With F.D.A. approval, the agency could simply have embraced the test used by the W.H.O., Dr. Mina said. The government could do so even now. “It’s just a very American approach to say, ‘We’re the U.S., the major U.S. public health lab, and we’re going to not follow the leader,’” Dr. Mina said. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testing-cdc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testin...
theseadroid 7y ago
You are the problem the virus is not under control right now. What background do you possess to make such claims? What scientific references can back up your no-matter-what? You might be expert in other fields but that doesn't give you the qualifications to decide matters on public health. No I'm not here to present evidence that what you said is not true. I'm just angry. You might be intelligent, you might be following the news for all those days. And that won't make you qualify to make public health claims. It's almost like in any climate change discussion someone would say: change of climate will benefit certain species obviously. It sounds logical, yet just a shitty conjecture.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Conjecture is accepted here on HN. Others can back it up with sources, or refute it with sources.

nerdponx 7y ago

Could the CDC intentionally be avoiding increasing testing to avoid panic? If the numbers are to be believed, no matter what we'll see a sizable number of infected this year and risk losing many of the elderly. This is the only logical explanation at this point. Or you can replace "avoid panic" with "avoid bad press for Trump".

DuskStar 7y ago
"A US government agency massively dropped the ball" should always be a possibility to consider. Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
- nerdponx 7y ago
  Both things are likely true here. Also recall that incompetence in the CDC likely stems from politically-motivated firings and funding cuts in 2018.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    The 2018 funding cuts to the CDC weren't really "cuts" as much as they were the expiry of a 5-year emergency grant to fight Ebola. If it was meant to continue forever, perhaps it shouldn't have been passed as emergency funding... I don't think you're wrong about the firings though.

yongjik 7y ago

If China thought the same way, we'd be seeing a hundred million patients by now, accompanied by a breakdown of social order. Clearly China didn't think so, so they clamped down on the disease as hard as possible (albeit after missing the initial warning), and they have the disease somewhat under control. Same is happening in South Korea, Italy, and other places.

IIAOPSW 7y ago

I for one have full faith in the United States government to handle the situation competently and expediently. Facetiousness aside, that doesn't sound like the CDC. "Hide the numbers even from ourselves and hope it goes away" is the antithesis of what a scientist stands for. No way someone at the CDC wants that as official policy. But you know who has tons of influence over policy, an estranged relation with objective facts, a disdain for experts, values the perception of a good economy over everything, and is worried about re-election this year? Call me excessively partisan / bringing politics into it / whatever else. The danger here needs to be stated and I don't care what it makes me look like. Trump and his surrogates have already made public statements suggesting Corona virus isn't real, is a hoax, is a ploy by democrats to crash the economy etc. This is a guy who fudges numbers even on trivial things like the size of his inauguration crowd. He already calls all news that makes him look bad "fake". Why wouldn't he give an order to keep the true infectious numbers hidden? Maybe not a direct order to fudge the numbers, but certainly by way of proxy like limiting the amount of testing.

zaroth 7y ago
The CDC screwed up the tests all by themselves, even the final primers they are using are questionable. Combined with the FDA blocking local labs from testing based on bad regulations, the government screwed up the initial response just fine without any help from Trump. Trump says anyone who wants to be tested can get tested and the CDC says they just shipped a couple million test kits around the country. As usual, don’t blame as malice what can be adequately described as incompetence.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  > Trump says anyone who wants to be tested can get tested Which was an entirely false claim at the time he said it.
- alasdair_ 7y ago
  Despite the claims that we would have a million test kits out by last Friday, we don’t have them. Hell, the people in the Kirkland home that is the biggest source of deaths STILL have not all been tested - today they finally got more test kits - 45 test kits for 63 untested patients and dozens of staff. We are being lied to.

Alex3917 7y ago

> there's not much that can be done for viral infections There is a ton of research suggesting it's possible to reduce your risk of death by like 99%. There was metastudy on the front page of HN a couple days ago suggesting that vitamin D3 alone can reduce your risk of death by like 50% for those who are otherwise deficient. The most recent Cochrane review on Vitamin C suggests that that alone can reduce your risk of death from pneumonia by like 80%. Those aren't even the only things you can do before getting the virus. And once you get the virus there are like 6 different steps by which it kills you, and there are various things you can take to ameliorate what is happening at each step. Viruses can replicate up to once a minute, so if you've already been letting it replicate inside you for a couple weeks before taking something to block viral replication then taking something to do that isn't going to do anything after the fact, but it's absolutely a misconception to say that there's nothing we can do for fighting viruses.

peter303 7y ago
lots of fake news out there

graeme 7y ago

> No matter what, and the end, you will get accurate numbers for death Not necessarily. You only get accurate numbers for deaths if you test deaths. Some countries reporting zero cases may have had deaths that will never be reported. The US likely has also had unreported deaths.

peter303 7y ago

No, the CDC created a defective first kit, delaying EFFECTIVE national testing a month. Congress should investigate the reason for this failure. We'd be far ahead if we bought test from Germany or Korea. NPR had a story about genomics lab that repurposed some of it research equipment to provide some testing resources. Apparently about 70 other labs, including Gate's, did similar and provide backup resources. But a month delay seriously damaged the US response.

claudeganon 7y ago
The US also explicitly rejected the working German tests, adopted by the WHO, and continued pursuing their own kit, even after they failed the first go around, putting ourselves even further behind: > But German researchers were devising their own test, which was quickly adopted by the World Health Organization for distribution around the world. After the C.D.C.’s version turned out to be flawed, the agency continued to pursue it, despite the fact that another diagnostic test was already in wide use. With F.D.A. approval, the agency could simply have embraced the test used by the W.H.O., Dr. Mina said. The government could do so even now. “It’s just a very American approach to say, ‘We’re the U.S., the major U.S. public health lab, and we’re going to not follow the leader,’” Dr. Mina said. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testing-cdc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testin...

theseadroid 7y ago

You are the problem the virus is not under control right now. What background do you possess to make such claims? What scientific references can back up your no-matter-what? You might be expert in other fields but that doesn't give you the qualifications to decide matters on public health. No I'm not here to present evidence that what you said is not true. I'm just angry. You might be intelligent, you might be following the news for all those days. And that won't make you qualify to make public health claims. It's almost like in any climate change discussion someone would say: change of climate will benefit certain species obviously. It sounds logical, yet just a shitty conjecture.

londons_explore 7y ago
Conjecture is accepted here on HN. Others can back it up with sources, or refute it with sources.