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> But for the love of God, can we please stop politicizing this issue? Can we please have a moratorium on blaming the other side for whatever measures should /

> But for the love of God, can we please stop politicizing this issue? Can we please have a moratorium on blaming the other side for whatever measures should / should not be taken? Hard to do, when the correct thing for the administration to do is to stand back and hand decision making authority and control of resources to the bureaucracy. As long as the administration keeps interfering in the response, anything about the issue can't avoid being political.

makomk 7y ago
There's actually a really good test of your claim: the botched CDC rollout of testing kits. The CDC went about developing and producing the kits just like they would for any other disease under any other administration, free from meddling and micro-management, and they botched the rollout. The issue was immediately politicized. Mainstream publications made it a point of saying that it was the "Trump administration" that butched the rollout, blamed the lack of micro-management, and there's an endless wave of conspiracy theories everywhere about this being a deliberate cover-up by Trump.
- grey-area 7y ago
  The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
  - makomk 7y ago
    The "U.S. pandemic response team" that article is talking about were White House staff, part of the Trump administration rather than the non-partisan bureaucracy. The actual, on-the-ground organisations and bureaucracy involved in pandemic response - the stuff most people would probably think of as the pandemic response team and that the comment I'm replying to seems to suggest should be in charge - is still there. The staff it's talking about were also all part of the national security side of the administration rather than the health side, and of course it's the health side which is in charge of the CDC and the FDA.
    - grey-area 7y ago
      So you're saying that the administration which refuses to admit Coronavirus is a problem, which a year ago let go its entire pandemic coordination staff, which has proposed a 16% cut to CDC funding, and which today ordered immigration judges to remove CDC posters aimed at slowing the outbreak has nothing to do with the terrible response, and it should all instead be blamed on the officials at the CDC? The executive and administrative branches together respond to a crisis like this - for example by coordinating actions, providing more funding for health services or in extremis ordering quarantine in affected areas. None of that has been done. I don't think you can effectively separate the two responses, nor do I think this outbreak is somehow Trump's fault, but he and his administration are responding remarkably badly to it.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        The administration has put the vice president in charge. What is said publicly does not match actions - as is typical for this administration (or any other administration though this is more blatant about it)

makomk 7y ago

There's actually a really good test of your claim: the botched CDC rollout of testing kits. The CDC went about developing and producing the kits just like they would for any other disease under any other administration, free from meddling and micro-management, and they botched the rollout. The issue was immediately politicized. Mainstream publications made it a point of saying that it was the "Trump administration" that butched the rollout, blamed the lack of micro-management, and there's an endless wave of conspiracy theories everywhere about this being a deliberate cover-up by Trump.

grey-area 7y ago
The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
- makomk 7y ago
  The "U.S. pandemic response team" that article is talking about were White House staff, part of the Trump administration rather than the non-partisan bureaucracy. The actual, on-the-ground organisations and bureaucracy involved in pandemic response - the stuff most people would probably think of as the pandemic response team and that the comment I'm replying to seems to suggest should be in charge - is still there. The staff it's talking about were also all part of the national security side of the administration rather than the health side, and of course it's the health side which is in charge of the CDC and the FDA.
  - grey-area 7y ago
    So you're saying that the administration which refuses to admit Coronavirus is a problem, which a year ago let go its entire pandemic coordination staff, which has proposed a 16% cut to CDC funding, and which today ordered immigration judges to remove CDC posters aimed at slowing the outbreak has nothing to do with the terrible response, and it should all instead be blamed on the officials at the CDC? The executive and administrative branches together respond to a crisis like this - for example by coordinating actions, providing more funding for health services or in extremis ordering quarantine in affected areas. None of that has been done. I don't think you can effectively separate the two responses, nor do I think this outbreak is somehow Trump's fault, but he and his administration are responding remarkably badly to it.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      The administration has put the vice president in charge. What is said publicly does not match actions - as is typical for this administration (or any other administration though this is more blatant about it)