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American here, I can only dream of the United States having a response as good as Germany's. Your country is an example of a how a democracy should react in a s

American here, I can only dream of the United States having a response as good as Germany's. Your country is an example of a how a democracy should react in a situation like this and demonstrates that we don't need a totalitarian regime to handle a large scale crisis. I'm not saying it is perfect (what is?), but just that it is one of the free countries setting a strong standard.

JPKab 7y ago
To add to your point, Germany actually has a federalized system similar to what the United States has. A key difference in this specific scenario was that the United States didn't fully trust the federalized system for healthcare and disease prevention like the Germans did. Our CDC ended up owning the development, manufacturing, and distribution of test and therefore were able to tell doctors in all 50 states who could be tested and who couldn't. I think that this is a grossly inferior model and we should have instead allowed the states to have more money and therefore more control over creation of the tests. I think that the big issue that was exposed was not lack of centralization but too much of it with the wrong organizations. A nation of 330 odd million is much harder to govern especially in a centralized manner. an additional question I have is what do you think has been so awful about the United States response? From a pure numbers perspective I feel like the US isn't really doing badly from a per capita basis. Nobody has run out of ventilators yet. Infection rates are below the 95% confidence interval of the original models. Just curious as to your perspective. Do you think that these numbers are due to bad models and luck or due to the fact that the population has largely adhered to social distancing?
- danielrpa 7y ago
  I don't want to get into partisan politics, but the US central authorities weren't serious about the problem until relatively late in the process, and our testing ramp up was also very slow. The move to block travel from China was well timed, but it can arguably be seen as more influenced by geopolitics than health concerns. The US now is catching up fairly well as the country started playing on its strengths, such as the extremely strong industrial base, financial power and, for better or worse, international leverage. Regarding the more centralized system, it has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of Germany's central coordination is that it made generally good decisions from the get go, so the country was able to move quicker. The US had a confused central response and the states were able to implement local fixes that prevented the entire system from falling apart. So I think the US model has the advantage of offering a second layer of defense from poor central planning, which perhaps wouldn't be as easy in Germany (I'm speculating here, I don't know much about Germany democratic guards against bad central decisions).
  - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
    The US had the issue of complete failure of a federal monopoly. CDC and FDA failed at the most critical time and prohibited private enterprise and states from rushing in.
    - jakeogh 7y ago
      Measured by what? We achieved better results than every single pre-peak best case estimated outcome. If you know of a predicted outcome that we havent come in under, please link to it.
      - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
        Measured by a month of delayed testing at the outset of a virulent pandemic? > Forced to suspend the launch of a nationwide detection program for the coronavirus for a month, the C.D.C. lost credibility as the nation’s leading public health agency and the country lost ground in ways that continue to haunt grieving families, the sick and the worried well from one state to the next. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/health/cdc-coronavirus-lab-contamination-testing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/health/cdc-coronavirus-la...
        jakeogh 7y ago
        In science, when errors are made, we are supposed to acknowledge and correct them, which is what the CDC did. Why base your opinion on a second order result rather than first hand outcomes? If we had not tested at all, and still had this _drastically better than predicted_ result, might you still be unhappy about it? And the NYT... They are not just a news orginization. Still run by the BBC's Mark Thompson I see. https://imgur.com/VUdcIou https://imgur.com/VUdcIou https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIMxvS-WEAER49I.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIMxvS-WEAER49I.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CINJUoqUwAEkSip.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CINJUoqUwAEkSip.jpg
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

JPKab 7y ago

To add to your point, Germany actually has a federalized system similar to what the United States has. A key difference in this specific scenario was that the United States didn't fully trust the federalized system for healthcare and disease prevention like the Germans did. Our CDC ended up owning the development, manufacturing, and distribution of test and therefore were able to tell doctors in all 50 states who could be tested and who couldn't. I think that this is a grossly inferior model and we should have instead allowed the states to have more money and therefore more control over creation of the tests. I think that the big issue that was exposed was not lack of centralization but too much of it with the wrong organizations. A nation of 330 odd million is much harder to govern especially in a centralized manner. an additional question I have is what do you think has been so awful about the United States response? From a pure numbers perspective I feel like the US isn't really doing badly from a per capita basis. Nobody has run out of ventilators yet. Infection rates are below the 95% confidence interval of the original models. Just curious as to your perspective. Do you think that these numbers are due to bad models and luck or due to the fact that the population has largely adhered to social distancing?

danielrpa 7y ago
I don't want to get into partisan politics, but the US central authorities weren't serious about the problem until relatively late in the process, and our testing ramp up was also very slow. The move to block travel from China was well timed, but it can arguably be seen as more influenced by geopolitics than health concerns. The US now is catching up fairly well as the country started playing on its strengths, such as the extremely strong industrial base, financial power and, for better or worse, international leverage. Regarding the more centralized system, it has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of Germany's central coordination is that it made generally good decisions from the get go, so the country was able to move quicker. The US had a confused central response and the states were able to implement local fixes that prevented the entire system from falling apart. So I think the US model has the advantage of offering a second layer of defense from poor central planning, which perhaps wouldn't be as easy in Germany (I'm speculating here, I don't know much about Germany democratic guards against bad central decisions).
- gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
  The US had the issue of complete failure of a federal monopoly. CDC and FDA failed at the most critical time and prohibited private enterprise and states from rushing in.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    Measured by what? We achieved better results than every single pre-peak best case estimated outcome. If you know of a predicted outcome that we havent come in under, please link to it.
    - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
      Measured by a month of delayed testing at the outset of a virulent pandemic? > Forced to suspend the launch of a nationwide detection program for the coronavirus for a month, the C.D.C. lost credibility as the nation’s leading public health agency and the country lost ground in ways that continue to haunt grieving families, the sick and the worried well from one state to the next. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/health/cdc-coronavirus-lab-contamination-testing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/health/cdc-coronavirus-la...
      - jakeogh 7y ago
        In science, when errors are made, we are supposed to acknowledge and correct them, which is what the CDC did. Why base your opinion on a second order result rather than first hand outcomes? If we had not tested at all, and still had this _drastically better than predicted_ result, might you still be unhappy about it? And the NYT... They are not just a news orginization. Still run by the BBC's Mark Thompson I see. https://imgur.com/VUdcIou https://imgur.com/VUdcIou https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIMxvS-WEAER49I.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIMxvS-WEAER49I.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CINJUoqUwAEkSip.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CINJUoqUwAEkSip.jpg
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]