6 ms·

This whole line of analysis has confused me. The CDC tests, while flawed, were never very numerous, right? Is the contention that if these early tests had worke

This whole line of analysis has confused me. The CDC tests, while flawed, were never very numerous, right? Is the contention that if these early tests had worked, they actually would have been sufficient to protect the entire nation? It's seemed to me the problem has more been that we haven't stockpiled supplies over the past few years like South Korea did.

lmkg 7y ago
> Is the contention that if these early tests had worked, they actually would have been sufficient to protect the entire nation? The contention in the article is that there were multiple, compounding layers of fuck-ups.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  An analogy I used over a “Zoom & Bourbon” meetup last night was that the COVID handling by the US federal government is very similar to aircraft crashes: it’s never just one failure, but a series that cascade (and you invariably “get behind the aircraft” due to being overwhelmed) and lead you to the crash site. We’re almost to the crash site, just a few more weeks to go. Please make every attempt to stay safe and healthy.
  - 45ure 7y ago
    Are you by any chance describing the Swiss cheese model? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Yes! It’s overused, but very useful when communicating the idea.
      - 45ure 7y ago
        I agree.
      - robocat 7y ago
        The US response to Covid19 is nothing like the Swiss cheese model. The Swiss cheese model is a perfect storm of unlikely failures that leads to a negative outcome, a failure that slips through multiple safety nets and checks. A real “Swiss cheese failure” reads like a bizarre set of coincidences within a highly rational system of disaster prevention controls, with a unique outcome that never gets repeated again - like some plane accidents where every level of check/balance has had a miss. Other countries have not failed (Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, China) which shows that rational actions could prevent this. Many other countries have failed (Italy, Spain, US, Iran, etc) which shows this isn’t a Swiss cheese model.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- BoiledCabbage 7y ago
  > Meanwhile, the FDA did not allow anyone other than the CDC to test for coronavirus. true > there were multiple, compounding layers of fuck-ups. also true All of it is completely true. And the issue is that both of these were blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention to the situation. The CDC was struggling to develop the test, and the FDA regulates who can create tests under normal circumstances. The larger question is why the heck didn't the administration seeing what was going, on step in, and say this is an emergency situation, allow private testing! That's your role as head of the executive branch. Observe the individual government agencies and plan and coordinate a response. It would take 5 mins to call the FDA and say "due to this emergency situation, change your rules to allow private testing". Why did the admin just sit there this whole time? Everyone saw the CDC couldn't scale up in time. Everyone knew the FDA regulation only allowed the CDC to create a test. Why do nothing for weeks watching this train wreck? In any emergency or sudden crisis situation, shit happens - things don't go to plan. The point of leadership is to analyze what's going on and take decisive action to rectify it. Not just stand there. Put in place a damn contingency plan. If you have a livesite issue and one of your main services to diagnose goes down, You look to see how long it will take to get it back up - and if it's not fast enough you find a mitigation. You don't just stand there and say "Well, we'll just sit and wait however long it takes to get fixed while letting this thing spiral out of control. And do essentially nothing else to solve this."
  - dominotw 7y ago
    > FDA regulation only allowed the CDC to create a test wondering why this regulation exists and are there any guidelines for extreme situations.
    - brightball 7y ago
      I imagine it’s the same guidelines for most centralized regulations. People who believe that central control is good. Which is a much larger discussion.
      - jschwartzi 7y ago
Leary 7y ago
The CDC produced 160,000 tests that were defective. Meanwhile, the FDA did not allow anyone other than the CDC to test for coronavirus. That is the reason why the US was weeks behind on testing.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rocky1138 7y ago
  I don't doubt you, but I'd love it if you posted links to sources for the defective tests and the fact that the FDA didn't allow anyone but the CDC to test.
  - cr1895 7y ago
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-with-coronavirus-testing-in-the-us https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-wit...
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    https://www.gq.com/story/inside-americas-coronavirus-testing-crisis https://www.gq.com/story/inside-americas-coronavirus-testing...
nohat 7y ago
It's exponentially easier to respond to an outbreak the earlier you act, but our early response was hamstrung by the CDC and FDA (and complete apathy from the white house). We could have slowed or halted this in the early stages with better testing. At the least it would have confirmed how much community spread there already was and hopefully prodded the gov, states, and businesses into action sooner. Time matters. I wonder how many people the FDA killed by blocking local tests?
- grey-area 7y ago
  This lacklustre response is still going on, the federal government simply isn’t taking this seriously. Trump saying things will open up in just a few weeks and it’s important to restart the economy will cost thousands of lives by encouraging states not to lock down. Full lock down is now the only way out, and as it has spread, that will take months. Testing needs to massively ramp up too. 2000 people died in one day today globally from this, deaths have doubled in about five days and are growing exponentially.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Suggesting a resumption of normal work and not calling for more laggardly states to get their acts in order has been immensely irresponsible. Additionally he's reaffirmed the benefits of Plaquenil/Chloroquinine and already one self-medicator has died from improvising a supply[1]. Don't expect the federal government to start acting intelligently anytime soon. 1. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/man-dies-after-ingesting-chloroquine-attempt-prevent-coronavirus-n1167166 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/man-dies-after-in...
  - nohat 7y ago
    Yes, its infuriating but hardly surprising. This is what happens when you don't have a responsible adult in charge during a crisis. The economy does matter, but the longer we wait, the longer we'll have to endure a crippling lockdown. So far some governors have filled in for the missing executive function of this country. Unfortunately that's localized and states simply cannot apply the same level of resources or coordination that the federal government can.
nutjob2 7y ago
South Korea started developing tests for the virus early in the year and had the capability of testing on a wide scale when the virus broke out there. This combined with aggressive tracking and management is what gave SK the edge in controlling the disease. If the CDC had been at all organized they could have been in the same position as SK with respect to testing. If you can test and target the infected you don't need a stockpile of supplies.
merpnderp 7y ago
South Korea didn't do well just because they had supplies. They were able to test mind boggling number of people nearly from day one, which meant they could do contact tracing as fast as humanly possible and stop new cess as they were spread. And yes, the initial CDC test production we were promised would have been on par with South Korea's initial response. We had a chance to slow this down and the CDC blew it, then lied about it for weeks.
paulmd 7y ago
The problem is that the CDC didn't use the tests WHO had developed, and stonewalled states and private labs from developing their own testing, while they fucked around developing their own tests. OK, fine, if the CDC wants their own tests, whatever. The WHO tests were not the be-all end-all of testing. There was clearly room for improvement on test speed for example. I have seen this called out as something that specifically needed to be improved with the WHO tests, they are not "10 minute" type tests. But leaving us with no testing for two months is unacceptable. Preventing anyone else from taking a turn at the brass ring is also unacceptable. That's the problem with the CDC's "testing decision" here. If they wanted to develop their own test, they could work on it in parallel while deploying the tests that we had. IMO this was likely a top-down decision to try and "keep our numbers low" as it were. The President has been obsessed with not spooking the stock market with scary numbers going up, and the "fix" for that is not to do any testing at all. So he stalled the CDC from deploying testing and sent them off on a wild goose chase.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  Small correction: It wasn't the CDC preventing other tests from being used -- that's not their job. It was the FDA.

lmkg 7y ago

> Is the contention that if these early tests had worked, they actually would have been sufficient to protect the entire nation? The contention in the article is that there were multiple, compounding layers of fuck-ups.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
An analogy I used over a “Zoom & Bourbon” meetup last night was that the COVID handling by the US federal government is very similar to aircraft crashes: it’s never just one failure, but a series that cascade (and you invariably “get behind the aircraft” due to being overwhelmed) and lead you to the crash site. We’re almost to the crash site, just a few more weeks to go. Please make every attempt to stay safe and healthy.
- 45ure 7y ago
  Are you by any chance describing the Swiss cheese model? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Yes! It’s overused, but very useful when communicating the idea.
    - 45ure 7y ago
      I agree.
    - robocat 7y ago
      The US response to Covid19 is nothing like the Swiss cheese model. The Swiss cheese model is a perfect storm of unlikely failures that leads to a negative outcome, a failure that slips through multiple safety nets and checks. A real “Swiss cheese failure” reads like a bizarre set of coincidences within a highly rational system of disaster prevention controls, with a unique outcome that never gets repeated again - like some plane accidents where every level of check/balance has had a miss. Other countries have not failed (Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, China) which shows that rational actions could prevent this. Many other countries have failed (Italy, Spain, US, Iran, etc) which shows this isn’t a Swiss cheese model.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
BoiledCabbage 7y ago
> Meanwhile, the FDA did not allow anyone other than the CDC to test for coronavirus. true > there were multiple, compounding layers of fuck-ups. also true All of it is completely true. And the issue is that both of these were blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention to the situation. The CDC was struggling to develop the test, and the FDA regulates who can create tests under normal circumstances. The larger question is why the heck didn't the administration seeing what was going, on step in, and say this is an emergency situation, allow private testing! That's your role as head of the executive branch. Observe the individual government agencies and plan and coordinate a response. It would take 5 mins to call the FDA and say "due to this emergency situation, change your rules to allow private testing". Why did the admin just sit there this whole time? Everyone saw the CDC couldn't scale up in time. Everyone knew the FDA regulation only allowed the CDC to create a test. Why do nothing for weeks watching this train wreck? In any emergency or sudden crisis situation, shit happens - things don't go to plan. The point of leadership is to analyze what's going on and take decisive action to rectify it. Not just stand there. Put in place a damn contingency plan. If you have a livesite issue and one of your main services to diagnose goes down, You look to see how long it will take to get it back up - and if it's not fast enough you find a mitigation. You don't just stand there and say "Well, we'll just sit and wait however long it takes to get fixed while letting this thing spiral out of control. And do essentially nothing else to solve this."
- dominotw 7y ago
  > FDA regulation only allowed the CDC to create a test wondering why this regulation exists and are there any guidelines for extreme situations.
  - brightball 7y ago
    I imagine it’s the same guidelines for most centralized regulations. People who believe that central control is good. Which is a much larger discussion.
    - jschwartzi 7y ago

Leary 7y ago

The CDC produced 160,000 tests that were defective. Meanwhile, the FDA did not allow anyone other than the CDC to test for coronavirus. That is the reason why the US was weeks behind on testing.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rocky1138 7y ago
I don't doubt you, but I'd love it if you posted links to sources for the defective tests and the fact that the FDA didn't allow anyone but the CDC to test.
- cr1895 7y ago
  https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-with-coronavirus-testing-in-the-us https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-wit...
- wool_gather 7y ago
  https://www.gq.com/story/inside-americas-coronavirus-testing-crisis https://www.gq.com/story/inside-americas-coronavirus-testing...

nohat 7y ago

It's exponentially easier to respond to an outbreak the earlier you act, but our early response was hamstrung by the CDC and FDA (and complete apathy from the white house). We could have slowed or halted this in the early stages with better testing. At the least it would have confirmed how much community spread there already was and hopefully prodded the gov, states, and businesses into action sooner. Time matters. I wonder how many people the FDA killed by blocking local tests?

grey-area 7y ago
This lacklustre response is still going on, the federal government simply isn’t taking this seriously. Trump saying things will open up in just a few weeks and it’s important to restart the economy will cost thousands of lives by encouraging states not to lock down. Full lock down is now the only way out, and as it has spread, that will take months. Testing needs to massively ramp up too. 2000 people died in one day today globally from this, deaths have doubled in about five days and are growing exponentially.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Suggesting a resumption of normal work and not calling for more laggardly states to get their acts in order has been immensely irresponsible. Additionally he's reaffirmed the benefits of Plaquenil/Chloroquinine and already one self-medicator has died from improvising a supply[1]. Don't expect the federal government to start acting intelligently anytime soon. 1. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/man-dies-after-ingesting-chloroquine-attempt-prevent-coronavirus-n1167166 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/man-dies-after-in...
- nohat 7y ago
  Yes, its infuriating but hardly surprising. This is what happens when you don't have a responsible adult in charge during a crisis. The economy does matter, but the longer we wait, the longer we'll have to endure a crippling lockdown. So far some governors have filled in for the missing executive function of this country. Unfortunately that's localized and states simply cannot apply the same level of resources or coordination that the federal government can.

nutjob2 7y ago

South Korea started developing tests for the virus early in the year and had the capability of testing on a wide scale when the virus broke out there. This combined with aggressive tracking and management is what gave SK the edge in controlling the disease. If the CDC had been at all organized they could have been in the same position as SK with respect to testing. If you can test and target the infected you don't need a stockpile of supplies.

merpnderp 7y ago

South Korea didn't do well just because they had supplies. They were able to test mind boggling number of people nearly from day one, which meant they could do contact tracing as fast as humanly possible and stop new cess as they were spread. And yes, the initial CDC test production we were promised would have been on par with South Korea's initial response. We had a chance to slow this down and the CDC blew it, then lied about it for weeks.

paulmd 7y ago

The problem is that the CDC didn't use the tests WHO had developed, and stonewalled states and private labs from developing their own testing, while they fucked around developing their own tests. OK, fine, if the CDC wants their own tests, whatever. The WHO tests were not the be-all end-all of testing. There was clearly room for improvement on test speed for example. I have seen this called out as something that specifically needed to be improved with the WHO tests, they are not "10 minute" type tests. But leaving us with no testing for two months is unacceptable. Preventing anyone else from taking a turn at the brass ring is also unacceptable. That's the problem with the CDC's "testing decision" here. If they wanted to develop their own test, they could work on it in parallel while deploying the tests that we had. IMO this was likely a top-down decision to try and "keep our numbers low" as it were. The President has been obsessed with not spooking the stock market with scary numbers going up, and the "fix" for that is not to do any testing at all. So he stalled the CDC from deploying testing and sent them off on a wild goose chase.

wool_gather 7y ago
Small correction: It wasn't the CDC preventing other tests from being used -- that's not their job. It was the FDA.