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Unfortunately, we need to be skeptical about almost every decision and communication from the CDC, FDA, and a number of other federal agencies. The current admi

Unfortunately, we need to be skeptical about almost every decision and communication from the CDC, FDA, and a number of other federal agencies. The current administration has done a remarkably effective job of bending these agencies to their will and forcing out anyone who doesn't fall in line.

wonnage 6y ago
I think this is one of the great side tragedies of the coronavirus. The US generally had a lot of trust in these federal agencies. They've always been susceptible to political interference, as demonstrated now. But it's never (?) gotten to the point it has now, where you simply can't trust the CDC to provide accurate information, or information that every other country has accepted months ago. Will the next administration provide a V-shaped recovery in trust? Or is it just gone forever?
- bsder 6y ago
  > Will the next administration provide a V-shaped recovery in trust? Or is it just gone forever? The big problem is that in order to fix trust, you will need to purge a lot of the senior bureaucrats who decided that keeping their job was more important than serving the public. If you don't do this, then you have sent the signal that being a political operator is more important than doing your actual job.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization. — https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
- tridentlead 6y ago
  It's not the administration. It's just the general ineptitude of many government processes. The current crisis has just laid inadequacies bare.
  - throw-away_42 6y ago
    It is this Republican administration. They were left a playbook for this scenario. They threw it out, and then lied about it. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/12/fact-check-obama-left-trump-a-pandemic-response-playbook/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/12/fact-check-obama-left...
- rayhendricks 6y ago
  Yeah it’s readily gotten bad. University of Washington/Seattle flu study actually had to start testing people for Covid first.
zaroth 6y ago
I think you’re giving the current administration too much credit here. There’s no reason to claim a grand conspiracy to knee-cap the initial testing response. The CDC and the FDA managed to fail out of pure incompetence and ineptitude all by themselves.
- hitekker 6y ago
  I'm no fan of the CDC and FDA, but you'd have to be blind to ignore the failure of leadership at the top of the totem poll. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-n... https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/18/politics/kfile-trump-officials-coronavirus/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/18/politics/kfile-trump-official... The links go on and on. For most conservatives, I guess it's easier to blame the "deep state" or those "evil government bureaucrats" than admitting the leader they elected is incompetent.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    There’s no reason to play partisan politics here. If we want we can say Democrats were too busy trying to impeach Trump and calling Wuhan a “manufactured crisis” back when Trump ordered the borders closed Jan 30. The simple fact is non-partisan non-evil, simply incompetent bureaucrats at the State and Federal levels all failed to adequately prepare (PPE stockpiles) and had actively harmful policies set in place years ago which impeded the response or even actively worsened it, and too many remained in denial once community spread became apparent. Everything from a stranglehold on testing (FDA) to bungling the test kits (CDC) to flimsy border checks, poor initial contact tracing, to forcing COVID positive patients to nursing homes (Cuomo), to politicizing the quarantine to the point where they lose credibility (open letter from ‘healthcare professionals’ supporting protests). There’s nothing deep state or evil about it. It’s just the typical failure I expect from my government, blue or red, every time. Sad but true. To be fair, this was basically America’s first brush with a serious contagion in the modern era. Other countries that did better have had more practice. Frankly, I don’t think a full fledged multi-trillion dollar response (50-state hard quarantine) was politically possible on January 20th. Trump was acquitted on Feb 5, and Senators skipping impeachment hearings to get informed on COVID were literally being threatened that they would be dragged into the Senate to sit and listen to Ukraine testimony. From what I can tell, no one in either party was calling for measures stringent enough and early enough to have stopped the situation we have now. Senator Cotton was one who pushed particular hard to ground planes and is credited for that. Of course at the time the perplexing WHO guidance was against travel bans. Yes, the US certainly isn’t alone in the world in its missteps. And even if the lockdown had been harder and more consistent, there was still the flubbed testing, the flubbed medical response (ventilators), and the flubbed patient management. CDC initial tactical teams wanted to treat COVID patients like Ebola carriers, spending what looked like $100k per person in full isolation wards — I guess they were thinking this was going to be 10 or 20 people coming into the country. Then we end up sending sick people into common areas of nursing homes. Then they told people not to wear masks for weeks... Just totally nonsensical top to bottom.

wonnage 6y ago

I think this is one of the great side tragedies of the coronavirus. The US generally had a lot of trust in these federal agencies. They've always been susceptible to political interference, as demonstrated now. But it's never (?) gotten to the point it has now, where you simply can't trust the CDC to provide accurate information, or information that every other country has accepted months ago. Will the next administration provide a V-shaped recovery in trust? Or is it just gone forever?

bsder 6y ago
> Will the next administration provide a V-shaped recovery in trust? Or is it just gone forever? The big problem is that in order to fix trust, you will need to purge a lot of the senior bureaucrats who decided that keeping their job was more important than serving the public. If you don't do this, then you have sent the signal that being a political operator is more important than doing your actual job.
- teddyh 6y ago
  Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization. — https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
tridentlead 6y ago
It's not the administration. It's just the general ineptitude of many government processes. The current crisis has just laid inadequacies bare.
- throw-away_42 6y ago
  It is this Republican administration. They were left a playbook for this scenario. They threw it out, and then lied about it. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/12/fact-check-obama-left-trump-a-pandemic-response-playbook/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/12/fact-check-obama-left...
rayhendricks 6y ago
Yeah it’s readily gotten bad. University of Washington/Seattle flu study actually had to start testing people for Covid first.

zaroth 6y ago

I think you’re giving the current administration too much credit here. There’s no reason to claim a grand conspiracy to knee-cap the initial testing response. The CDC and the FDA managed to fail out of pure incompetence and ineptitude all by themselves.

hitekker 6y ago
I'm no fan of the CDC and FDA, but you'd have to be blind to ignore the failure of leadership at the top of the totem poll. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-n... https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/18/politics/kfile-trump-officials-coronavirus/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/18/politics/kfile-trump-official... The links go on and on. For most conservatives, I guess it's easier to blame the "deep state" or those "evil government bureaucrats" than admitting the leader they elected is incompetent.
- zaroth 6y ago
  There’s no reason to play partisan politics here. If we want we can say Democrats were too busy trying to impeach Trump and calling Wuhan a “manufactured crisis” back when Trump ordered the borders closed Jan 30. The simple fact is non-partisan non-evil, simply incompetent bureaucrats at the State and Federal levels all failed to adequately prepare (PPE stockpiles) and had actively harmful policies set in place years ago which impeded the response or even actively worsened it, and too many remained in denial once community spread became apparent. Everything from a stranglehold on testing (FDA) to bungling the test kits (CDC) to flimsy border checks, poor initial contact tracing, to forcing COVID positive patients to nursing homes (Cuomo), to politicizing the quarantine to the point where they lose credibility (open letter from ‘healthcare professionals’ supporting protests). There’s nothing deep state or evil about it. It’s just the typical failure I expect from my government, blue or red, every time. Sad but true. To be fair, this was basically America’s first brush with a serious contagion in the modern era. Other countries that did better have had more practice. Frankly, I don’t think a full fledged multi-trillion dollar response (50-state hard quarantine) was politically possible on January 20th. Trump was acquitted on Feb 5, and Senators skipping impeachment hearings to get informed on COVID were literally being threatened that they would be dragged into the Senate to sit and listen to Ukraine testimony. From what I can tell, no one in either party was calling for measures stringent enough and early enough to have stopped the situation we have now. Senator Cotton was one who pushed particular hard to ground planes and is credited for that. Of course at the time the perplexing WHO guidance was against travel bans. Yes, the US certainly isn’t alone in the world in its missteps. And even if the lockdown had been harder and more consistent, there was still the flubbed testing, the flubbed medical response (ventilators), and the flubbed patient management. CDC initial tactical teams wanted to treat COVID patients like Ebola carriers, spending what looked like $100k per person in full isolation wards — I guess they were thinking this was going to be 10 or 20 people coming into the country. Then we end up sending sick people into common areas of nursing homes. Then they told people not to wear masks for weeks... Just totally nonsensical top to bottom.