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> 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

> 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
    I can tell you that in normal times the FDA does prevent a good amount of injuries and deaths simply by being a chilling force for medical device manufacturers. It's not a matter of religious fervor to sometimes prevent the marketing of something because it can potentially be harmful.
- MikeAmelung 7y ago
  Well, you get somebody out here going "Hey, we've got great tests for this, the best." and a bunch of people who are about to drink aquarium chemicals take the test, get a negative result because the test doesn't work, and now you've got a bunch of morons running around infecting everyone else. The testing shortage is a grand fuck-up, to be sure. But it's not as bad as waiting to tell everyone to stop congregating and start washing their hands more.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > it's not as bad as waiting to tell everyone to stop congregating and start washing their hands more People should have already been doing this themselves from basic common sense. You shouldn't need the government to tell you to take obvious precautions.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Well, in extreme situations the best thing to do isn't to fire the pandemic response team three years prior cause "never gonna happen". Those regulations (and most bureaucracy to be honest) is to provide guidance and constraint during normal times - these are extreme times and it's perfectly rationale to restrict burdensome regulations that hurt the public good right now.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lisper 7y ago
> 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! At the risk of getting overly political for HN, it seems to me that the answer to that should be pretty obvious to anyone who has been paying any attention over the last three years: this administration has an active disdain for expertise of any kind. The only remaining question is whether the current situation will cause any of Trump's supporters to question the wisdom of valuing loyalty above all else (and particularly above competence). If not, then this is just the beginning of our pain.
- UncleOxidant 7y ago
  > The only remaining question is whether the current situation will cause any of Trump's supporters to question the wisdom of valuing loyalty above all else (and particularly above competence). If not, then this is just the beginning of our pain. Trump supporters aren't great at critical thinking - that's why we're in this mess. I'm pretty sure a large majority of them will buy the con that it was the previous administration's fault, or it was china's fault, or it was those pesky Democrat's fault, or it's only like the flu so why panic? Or all of the above. That and he'll convince'em that the checks that are coming are from him personally and isn't he just great for sending'em out? Yeah, we could still be in for trouble in November.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    Don't forget there was a large contingent of Republicans that reluctantly voted for Trump simply because he was the Republican. They wouldn't have minded Trump's obstinance when the only victim was the other team, but his failing to address reality in the face of a shared crisis is a completely different beast. If they're not already aghast at the complete lack of leadership they hear and see every day, a death toll of hundreds of thousands will certainly make them consider competing narratives.
roenxi 7y ago
> Everyone saw the CDC couldn't scale up in time. Everyone knew the FDA regulation... No way that is possibly true. People realised they didn't have tests. A bunch of people of a liberterian bent or systems thinkers would have picked the FDA as the problem very quickly. But for most people diagnosing and rectifying that sort of snarl in a complex bureaucratic process would have taken about as long as it did. This happened at blinding speed for a bureaucracy fixing up its own problems. There were compounding failures that required a government body to put their hand up and say "I have too much power" or "lets take a risk on letting some non-government actors take key roles". It wasn't going to work unless the executive happened by amazing luck of have an infectious disease specialist in a key role (maybe president or VP) who was already sweating at night about asymptomatic infections. The problem is the legislative framework where first response in a crisis was to centralise the response on a single point of failure. It barely matters who the actors were, superhuman effort by one or two people can't reliably overcome a bad system. This should never have been a situation where the CDC making a mistake delayed the crisis response by months and nobody but the CDC/FDA had the power to fix that.
- BoiledCabbage 7y ago
  > No way that is possibly true. People realised they didn't have tests. A bunch of people of a liberterian bent or systems thinkers would have picked the FDA as the problem very quickly. You didn't need a "libertarian bent" or special"systems thinking" to figure that out. The CDC was testing at most 50 people a day IIRC. Can 50 tests across an entire country get you detailed info? No. You need labs to run tests, CDC has limited lab space for testing. South Korea was capable of doing thousands of tests per day. No rational person though 50 was sufficient. They simply sat and waited for the CDC doing nothing. Who has labs? Universities, sure start there? Who does the testing for the population in general? Quest & LabCorp, have them run the test. > It wasn't going to work unless the executive happened by amazing luck of have an infectious disease specialist in a key role It doesn't require having "amazing luck" to see what was happening. Everyone on the internet looking at it did. Like the task force they killed? This is utter incompetence by the executive branch. In January, how do you see 700 million people on some form of lock down in China and not immediately spin up a task force to evaluate risks to the US? It's astounding levels of negligence. The administration let the country down enormously. And a lot of people are going to suffer because of it.

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
  I can tell you that in normal times the FDA does prevent a good amount of injuries and deaths simply by being a chilling force for medical device manufacturers. It's not a matter of religious fervor to sometimes prevent the marketing of something because it can potentially be harmful.
MikeAmelung 7y ago
Well, you get somebody out here going "Hey, we've got great tests for this, the best." and a bunch of people who are about to drink aquarium chemicals take the test, get a negative result because the test doesn't work, and now you've got a bunch of morons running around infecting everyone else. The testing shortage is a grand fuck-up, to be sure. But it's not as bad as waiting to tell everyone to stop congregating and start washing their hands more.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > it's not as bad as waiting to tell everyone to stop congregating and start washing their hands more People should have already been doing this themselves from basic common sense. You shouldn't need the government to tell you to take obvious precautions.
munk-a 7y ago
Well, in extreme situations the best thing to do isn't to fire the pandemic response team three years prior cause "never gonna happen". Those regulations (and most bureaucracy to be honest) is to provide guidance and constraint during normal times - these are extreme times and it's perfectly rationale to restrict burdensome regulations that hurt the public good right now.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lisper 7y ago

> 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! At the risk of getting overly political for HN, it seems to me that the answer to that should be pretty obvious to anyone who has been paying any attention over the last three years: this administration has an active disdain for expertise of any kind. The only remaining question is whether the current situation will cause any of Trump's supporters to question the wisdom of valuing loyalty above all else (and particularly above competence). If not, then this is just the beginning of our pain.

UncleOxidant 7y ago
> The only remaining question is whether the current situation will cause any of Trump's supporters to question the wisdom of valuing loyalty above all else (and particularly above competence). If not, then this is just the beginning of our pain. Trump supporters aren't great at critical thinking - that's why we're in this mess. I'm pretty sure a large majority of them will buy the con that it was the previous administration's fault, or it was china's fault, or it was those pesky Democrat's fault, or it's only like the flu so why panic? Or all of the above. That and he'll convince'em that the checks that are coming are from him personally and isn't he just great for sending'em out? Yeah, we could still be in for trouble in November.
- mindslight 7y ago
  Don't forget there was a large contingent of Republicans that reluctantly voted for Trump simply because he was the Republican. They wouldn't have minded Trump's obstinance when the only victim was the other team, but his failing to address reality in the face of a shared crisis is a completely different beast. If they're not already aghast at the complete lack of leadership they hear and see every day, a death toll of hundreds of thousands will certainly make them consider competing narratives.

roenxi 7y ago

> Everyone saw the CDC couldn't scale up in time. Everyone knew the FDA regulation... No way that is possibly true. People realised they didn't have tests. A bunch of people of a liberterian bent or systems thinkers would have picked the FDA as the problem very quickly. But for most people diagnosing and rectifying that sort of snarl in a complex bureaucratic process would have taken about as long as it did. This happened at blinding speed for a bureaucracy fixing up its own problems. There were compounding failures that required a government body to put their hand up and say "I have too much power" or "lets take a risk on letting some non-government actors take key roles". It wasn't going to work unless the executive happened by amazing luck of have an infectious disease specialist in a key role (maybe president or VP) who was already sweating at night about asymptomatic infections. The problem is the legislative framework where first response in a crisis was to centralise the response on a single point of failure. It barely matters who the actors were, superhuman effort by one or two people can't reliably overcome a bad system. This should never have been a situation where the CDC making a mistake delayed the crisis response by months and nobody but the CDC/FDA had the power to fix that.

BoiledCabbage 7y ago
> No way that is possibly true. People realised they didn't have tests. A bunch of people of a liberterian bent or systems thinkers would have picked the FDA as the problem very quickly. You didn't need a "libertarian bent" or special"systems thinking" to figure that out. The CDC was testing at most 50 people a day IIRC. Can 50 tests across an entire country get you detailed info? No. You need labs to run tests, CDC has limited lab space for testing. South Korea was capable of doing thousands of tests per day. No rational person though 50 was sufficient. They simply sat and waited for the CDC doing nothing. Who has labs? Universities, sure start there? Who does the testing for the population in general? Quest & LabCorp, have them run the test. > It wasn't going to work unless the executive happened by amazing luck of have an infectious disease specialist in a key role It doesn't require having "amazing luck" to see what was happening. Everyone on the internet looking at it did. Like the task force they killed? This is utter incompetence by the executive branch. In January, how do you see 700 million people on some form of lock down in China and not immediately spin up a task force to evaluate risks to the US? It's astounding levels of negligence. The administration let the country down enormously. And a lot of people are going to suffer because of it.