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Except these agencies have never had so much funding as they do now. Its hard to put a finger on exactly why they seem entirely incapable of fulfilling their c
by zaroth 7y ago
Except these agencies have never had so much funding as they do now.
Its hard to put a finger on exactly why they seem entirely incapable of fulfilling their central mission during this crisis. Why were the test kits botched? Why was testing so artificially limited? Why do the primers seem poorly designed? Why does the contact tracing seem to be so behind the ball? Etc.
I think political finger pointing is easy and maybe even satisfying but not helpful or particularly enlightening.
- mattkrause 7y ago> never had so much funding as they do now. "Now" is the operative word. You can't just put a government agency in cold storage and thaw it out when you need it. If the budget and leadership get slashed (as they were in 2018), people move on, hard-won lessons get forgotten, and they take a while to get back. If this happens repeatedly, you lose the ability to attract talented people for a long time.
- nl 7y agoPolitico has a good piece[1], but with no real answers. But neither the CDC nor the coronavirus task force chaired by Vice President Mike Pence would say who made the decision to forgo the WHO test and instead begin a protracted process of producing an American test, one that got delayed by manufacturing problems, possible lab contamination and logistical delays. This seems to give some kind of explanation of what was going on: But there were additional problems with the administration’s approach to testing, according to experts and former officials. From the start, the White House focused on containment, trusting that a limited ban on travel to and from China could somehow force a fast-moving virus to stop cold when it hit the Chinese border. But, while containment might have helped buy the U.S. some time, without aggressive domestic surveillance through testing, it was an incomplete strategy. Except that doesn't really explain why the CDC didn't do it's job. Surely the White House wasn't actively stopping disease surveillance? [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/06/coronavirus-testing-failure-123166 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/06/coronavirus-testing...
- joe_the_user 7y agoYeah, The thing is that Trump indeed seems to be following the standard corporate CEO script: "stop bad news by any means necessary, then sweep the rest under the carpet when the press isn't looking". But this doesn't quite for running an actual country /s/understatement.
- zaroth 7y agoThe CDC just "had" to make their own test probably due to a combination of regulations and NIH syndrome (no pun intended). It wouldn't have been such an issue if they didn't fail so spectacularly at designing a test. From what I gather, designing these things is not actually rocket science, more like grad-level work. The fact that local labs throughout the country were ready to go with their own self-made testing kits supports this. The focus on containment by the White House IMO was totally appropriate. When you have zero local cases, that's what you focus on... in order to buy you time to prepare, shore up supplies and disaster plans, and distribute test kits. Containment (i.e. closing borders) is the political part of the process, so the Administration focused on that while the scientists are busy designing and distributing the test kits. In theory...
- nl 7y agoContainment is absolutely appropriate - and can and should be done within the country as well as border restrictions. But it doesn't seem there has been much focus on that at all. Containment requires rapid large scale testing. The US doesn't seem at all prepared for that.
- refurb 7y agohttps://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/cdc-budget.jpg https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/cdc-budget.jpg