13 ms·

The CDC lost control of the coronavirus pandemic, then the agency disappeared

159 points by SirLJ 6y ago

ykevinator 6y ago
I hope we do a serious review of the cdc when this is all over. For all the money we give them, they totally failed to "control" the outbreak. It feels like it's devolved into an academic institution and we have enough of those.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  When your boss gives you insane directions and ignores any advice you give that they don't like, what do you expect?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- vikramkr 6y ago
  No, it's worse. It devolved into a political institution. Any academic institution would have trivially been able to get the PCR test right (and academic institutions did). Bur our agencies gave into political pressures, were defunded and declared in critical moments, etc, leading to the failure of the federal government we see now
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    >gave into political pressures People don't like getting fired, blame the politicians for threatening and firing anyone who disagrees with them, don't blame the people whose jobs were in jeopardy.
    - vikramkr 6y ago
      Good point. Might be better phrased as "were overtaken by political pressure" or the like
    - jonplackett 6y ago
      This same thing happened here in the UK (with similar results). Scientists scared of being ostracised if they spoke against the government. So they just went along with all the dumb decisions. We also have an group of scientists ‘Sage’ who are meant to be our best minds, who gave similarly useless and inconsistent advice because it was politicised.
      - hardlianotion 6y ago
        What are you relying on for evidence that this happened as you describe?
        jonplackett 6y ago
        There was an interview with one of the scientists who laid it all out. He has terminal cancer himself and therefore said he doesn’t care about future access.
        hardlianotion 6y ago
        If it was in text, can you provide a link to it?
    - watwut 6y ago
      While I think that politicians are primary people to blame, I dont think the "I was afraid for my job" is good enough answer from high level leadership figures. That answer is acceptable from janitor or low level worker. I think that culturally, both in business and in politics, we are locked in set of values that makes opposition or disagreement against someone higher in hierarchy or with power as inappropriate and subservience as virtue. It then amounts to massive system of enablers who feel good about themselves and even criticize non-enablers wherever narcissist appears. We praise people who manage to climb the ladder no matter how they got there and what they do there. We devalue people who make ethical decisions when said decision hurts their career.
- iagovar 6y ago
  IDK the US that well, but if you don't have coercitive power over politicians what can you do. I'm aware that CDC has been criticized for other stuff as well, but in the end they seem to not have that much power. In my country (Spain) it has been a shitshow. Everyone who warned about the upcoming situation was ridiculed and/or insulted in a coordinated effort between government and media. Now the same people is being called captain after the fact. It's pretty sad to see, and I've been subject to this myself despite not being a public figure. Everything has turned into a political shitshow. When you have medical professionals in TV insisting that the government is right, and that this is just a flu, when you have your lead epidemiologist in TV with absurd claims, when you have your OSHA-spanish-equivalent in National Police fired for buying masks (and the list goes on and on), then how can anyone trust the institutions. I mean, my regional government which is corrupt, and sometimes hilariously inept has done a better job. What the *@^- man.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    > IDK the US that well If I can offer a piece of advice in that direction, it is to remember that the US is in fact a union of 50 states, and those states actually have a fair amount of power. The federal government, as powerful as it appears to be, really does lack authority in many areas. While they could absolutely have done a 1000% better job leading the response to the coronavirus, it was always going to fall mostly on the states to do the actual heavy lifting. It's the nature of our political system.
    - TomSwirly 6y ago
      And yet America managed two world wars just fine. Speaking from the Netherlands, it seems clear that about 40% of Americans lost their marbles in this grand collective paranoid fantasy starting around Nixon, growing through Reagan, and then really taking off around the end of the W. Bush administration. They started to believe these terrible and terribly false things about their fellow citizens, about science, about pretty well everything. And they purchase hundreds of millions of weapons. I can't see how it will possibly end well.
manicdee 6y ago
Clearly it was the CDC at fault here, not a few hand picked bureaucrats, not the chain of command, not a president with a penchant for firing people who challenge his authority. What a poorly concocted article. The least the author could do so remind people of the “starve the beast” approach to public utilities that the Republicans have been pursuing for decades. Nope, we’ll just throw the entire CDC under a bus.
- j4yav 6y ago
  For what it's worth, and despite the title, when I read this article the message I took away is exactly the one you are describing.
  - dmix 6y ago
    It is Buzzfeed after all.
    - andreareina 6y ago
      I've found the Buzzfeed content that makes it on here to be pretty good. Which is weird, it is Buzzfeed after all. I don't think it's just the HN selection effect, as P(liked|Buzzfeed) > P(liked|HN).
      - rootusrootus 6y ago
        BuzzfeedNews in particular makes a regular appearance because it is a world-class journalism organization. It does not seem to share much with Buzzfeed.
    - paul7986 6y ago
      Yeah more crappy for profit media spreading outrage. The news/media is always negative ...tired of it and tuned it out/enjoying life without it!
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  Agreed, we’ve all watched the president say all the wrong things at the wrong times during this episode. I don’t doubt he is pulling the wrong strings behind the scenes too.
vikramkr 6y ago
Over the past few years a series of American agencies have lost their reputation and world standing. The FAA with the 737 max, the CDC with the test, the FDA with testing regulation and hydroxychloroquine. Its important to have institutions that work, but we've spent years deliberately gutting them and undervaluing them. All that money spent on the military and homeland security, and in the end we were caught utterly unprepared for the greatest national security threat of the past few decades. Even though we have more aircraft carriers than makes sense to have, we'd rather build another one than invest in crucial infrastructure such as strong regulatory agencies and science infrastructure. And we get to pay the price of those misplaced priorities as we barrel towards 200,000 dead. Hopefully this serves as a sort of wakeup call.
- jamesrom 6y ago
  Without distracting from you central point (which I very much agree with), please read the science around hydroxychloroquine, not the news. It works best taken with Zinc, and early when symptoms first present.
  - ibarea277 6y ago
    No. This has been disproven by the only good studies we have. Even with zinc and early, it has not been shown to have any effect.
    - jamesrom 6y ago
      There are zero studies that disprove zinc + early has a strong effect. You are wrong. Also, the lancet study was retracted for flawed methodology, other studies show slight benefit of hydroxychloroquine. There are zero studies that show it has no effect.
      - nl 6y ago
        https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/05/the-recovery-trial-reports-on-hydroxychloroquine https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/05/th... There's no studies yet. But there aren't any preliminary results that look promising, and the only people who think it is promising also thought hydroxychloroquine was. So it's pretty unlikely it's going to do anything.
C19is20 6y ago
The article started off convincingly "On January 17th...", but i gave up after "....the world’s most trusted public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,...". If the sentence had've been "...the world’s most trusted public health agency, [in The United States (well, maybe)]", I would have perhaps considered reading more.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Just wondering what you would nominate for the worlds most trusted public health agency? Maybe the WHO?
mensetmanusman 6y ago
This is my favorite chart: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-million?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~USA~SWZ~NOR~ITA~DEU~FIN~FRA~CAN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-mill...
- pgrote 6y ago
  Why is it your favorite chart?
  - drocer88 6y ago
    Presumably it is the spike in U.S. deaths on 26 June. The text in the mouseover does say that states added probable deaths on that date.
- pinkfoot 6y ago
  Best they rename Swaziland to its new name "eSwatini" before the woke find out!
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    Being offended by completely speculative offence theoretically been taken by ill-defined third parties is one of the Internet's weirder trends.
chasing 6y ago
At the moment we're well beyond the CDC. We have a President and his various acolyte governors who have so utterly botched and politicized our COVID-19 response that many people won't take the most basic steps to protect themselves and those around them. It's maddening and leaves those of us who are trying to do the right thing feel totally unprotected and unsupported, especially in states like Texas and Florida. The CDC may have made missteps, but there's no way it can possibly operate as well as it should in this political climate.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Of course there'll be politics on an issue of great social importance. That's supposed to be the point of having a CDC, that they can offer respected, apolitical advice on what we need to do. When they fail catastrophically, we inevitably fall back to the normal strategy for resolving disputes about what our society should do, which is politics.
  - someguydave 6y ago
    Looking at the HN comments apparently nobody wants to believe that civil servants can fail unless hindered by the political bosses, and that Presidents are personally responsible for what 2.8 million federal employees do all day. I wonder if they blame the Queen in the U.K.?
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      The queen isn't in charge of the civil service. People in Britain absolutely do blame the cabinet (the UK's executive) and particularly the prime minster when they fuck up, yes. I mean, obviously.
      - someguydave 6y ago
        You should watch “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” for reasons why you shouldn’t believe the elected politicians have anything to do with what the UK government actually does.
victorbstan 6y ago
I haven’t seen any mention in the article about political interference. Consider Trumps policies and you’ll see why all these organizations are failing. He’s destroying them.
aalexxjjamess 6y ago
Who trusted the CDC in the first place? The US healthcare system has been compromised by rampant profiteering for a long time.
- _jal 6y ago
  This is a bit like blaming fire fighters for your disagreements with your fire insurance issuer. They may indeed both suck, but blaming one for the failure of the other doesn't make much sense.
cityofdelusion 6y ago
The pandemic has done a great job of highlighting weaknesses inherit to democratic governments. Populism and demagoguery, combined with rewarding loyalty and punishing dissidents. A dysfunctional democratic republic isn’t very different from an autocracy. I suspect during times like this it might even weaker, since you end up with no national unity. You can’t deal with a pandemic effectively in this kind of political environment.
loraa 6y ago
This is exactly what happens when you have a society afraid of hiring the right people for the job. You end up with people that can't properly run an organization.
b0sk 6y ago
This is classic starve the beast. There is one party that continuously tries to gut government institutions - like putting Betsy Devos to head education, Wheeler to head EPA etc etc and then has the gall to say that government institutions don’t work Who gutted the pandemic response unit?
- ausbah 6y ago
  Trump, Trump did. Edit: Trump's administration did request funding to the "pandemic response team", set up by the Obama administration, be cut. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
  - emmelaich 6y ago
    Obama cut it too. Until Ebola.
    - darkerside 6y ago
      Which was handled before it made its way to the US in any significant capacity. Imagine Trump had taken clear and decisive action against COVID in January.
      - emmelaich 6y ago
        Hindsight is easy. > Imagine Trump had taken clear and decisive action against COVID in January Like the travel ban, which he announced on Jan 31?
        darkerside 6y ago
        Of course hindsight is easy. Does that mean we shouldn't make use of it? And yes, like the travel ban, which clearly was the wrong solution for the problem. I don't blame the Trump administration for failing to predict the future, but I do see that they willfully ignored bad news over and over again and in fact continue to do so even today, which is completely unconscionable.
ed-209 6y ago
"Believing people without symptoms didn't spread the virus, the agency limited testing, discouraged masking..." This is false by Fauci's own account (see below interview) in which he states mask wearing was discouraged in order to secure availability for health workers. This is no small distinction as it raises questions about the importance of public trust/credibility during a health crisis. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0XHC5Kxxv_w https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0XHC5Kxxv_w
- DanBC 6y ago
  Can you link to the meta-analysis or RCT of mask wearing that were already published in March, or April, or June? But also, see this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/world/europe/coronavirus-spread-asymptomatic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/world/europe/coronavirus-...
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    for covid in particular? it was widely known generally that masks reduce the spread of that class of virus.
  - afthonos 6y ago
    Common sense dictates that the base belief should be “something that prevents my breath from going as far should be effective at reducing spread of an airborne illness.” The null hypothesis should be that masks help; alternatively, the prior should favor masks.
- Icedcool 6y ago
  This is critical. Personally as a result I’ve lost trust with the organization, and the statements they make.
- ReticentVole 6y ago
  There are a minimal number of excess deaths now associated with COVID, so what is the problem? Allowing the community to acquire immunity naturally during Summer is a good way to minimise the spread of the virus come Winter. COVID severity seems heavily linked with Vitamin D levels, so lockdown during Summer would possibly have been counter-productive for the general population. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Why should Governments force people into lockdown for a virus with a CFR of 0.26%, marginally more deadly than the Flu at 0.1%? In particular, COVID deaths are concentrated at those aged 70+ with existing health conditions, so broad-scale lockdown and enforced mask wearing doesn't make sense - when targeted support for the elderly and vulnerable would be effective and less disruptive.
magwa101 6y ago
Leadership matters and affects everyone in and outside the organization.
LatteLazy 6y ago
The FDA, the CDC, WHO, our media and governments in the US and UK all need massive systematic reform if not outright replacement.
hourislate 6y ago
Woulda,shoulda,coulda... We live in a very different world today where someone can get on a plane and spread a virus across the planet in a matter of days. The only hope in containment was that the virus didn't spread easily. The best solution that I can think of that may have stopped the spread of the virus would've been giving everyone as many N95 masks as needed and make wearing them mandatory. Unfortunately it was far easier to spend 5 trillion $$$ on everything but that. These masks should have been free and available at every street corner of the USA, Subways, Buses, Airports, Supermarkets, etc. This isn't over and I don't know how it ends, but hopefully we'll come out the other side a little smarter and more prepared for the next one.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  The country still refuses to wear masks. Led behind a president who refuses to wear masks. This is literally the minimum he could do.
fortran77 6y ago
One of my pet peeves is the way nobody in the Government is caring about safety on air travel. I had to fly recently and someone near me was using a CPAP. Study after study shows that CPAP aerosolizes and spreads virus particles much more rapidly than normal respiration. Various Government agencies warn about this. - https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/wp-content/uploads/sites/197/2020/04/COVID-19-and-CPAP-Frequently-Asked-Questions.pdf https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/wp-content/uploads/sites/197... - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6832307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6832307/ - https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/hcp/aerosol.pdf https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/hcp/aero... - https://em.umaryland.edu/educational_pearls/3741/ https://em.umaryland.edu/educational_pearls/3741/ I've written (FedEx) to the CEOs of United and American. American didn't answer. United says they're required by law to allow people to use CPAP in-flight. There's no excuse for this. A person who needs a CPAP is already a high-risk for dying if they contract COVID. Do they want to take down everyone else with them?
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Americans with Disabilities Act may require the airlines to permit CPAP users to travel with the machine. It’s a tough call, but I don’t think “CPAP users are grounded indefinitely” is a fair and equitable position.
  - TomSwirly 6y ago
    Where did "indefinitely" come from? That's a rather big jump, isn't it? It's the middle of a pandemic! Surely this is not the time to have a big germ-spraying machine in the middle of an airplane? CPAP users can wait until after the epidemic has stabilized to travel. I mean, everyone should avoid travelling. Given that the last two days in a row had record new cases and that three states today already had record numbers by midday, I'm... disconcerted at the lack of urgency that seems to be so common.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Given that it's the literal definition and common usage of “indefinitely” (without fixed or specified limit, not precise or exact), I don't think it's a big jump at all.
pgrote 6y ago
The United States doesn't have effective federal pandemic laws. The federal government looks to the states to manage their own health arenas and in those states many allow county level health departments to run with the ball. This is how you end up with one state doing x and another state next door doing y. It even gets to the county level with a county in a state doing x and the county next to it doing y during a pandemic. The CDC lost the battle before it began. It was heartening to see everyone sort of pull together to flatten the curve, but with what has happened during the phased reopenings, you'll never have American citizens do it again voluntarily.
nl 6y ago
I did some work with the CDC in 2014. They were organised and sensible and fantastic to work with, especially in comparison to local equivalents here in Australia. It's shocking to see how badly they failed.
- o-__-o 6y ago
  Fun fact,CDC was not prepared in 2014. FEMA appeared to have their shit together but completely boondoggled every disaster response in some way. It’s amazing we didn’t see this coming sooner
  - nl 6y ago
    The project I was on was on Dengue Fever and Zika and they had their shit together on that. The data was clean, well organised, delivered quickly. Somehow between then and now that data collection side has fallen to bits to the point where efforts like the John Hopkins tracking project had to rely on the NYT open source collection on GitHub. I don't know who is responsible for pandemic response in the US, but back then everyone at CDC seemed competent and dedicated.
- TomSwirly 6y ago
  What might have happened to them since 2014, I wonder? And what are the other agencies like now? I don't even want to think about it.
olivermarks 6y ago
I can't take Buzzfeed 'news reporters' very seriously given the recent debacle with Zerohedge and subsequent plagiarism firing of Ryan Broderick. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-reporter-who-got-zerohedge-banned-twitter-fired-plagiarism https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-reporter-who-go... This CDC piece by Vergano & Hirji is more of an opinion and perception article than 'news reporting. I worry that click bait sites like 'Buzzfeed'(ridiculous name) are taken too seriously, especially when there is so much great well researched and argued material online that is often dismissed as 'conspiracy theories' etc etc
oneplane 6y ago
I wonder if that title is the best one to suit te reality. From an outsider it would look like control was 'taken' from, or never 'given to' the CDC, rather than lost.
aazaa 6y ago
> Frieden, the former CDC chief, argued that the agency failed largely because it has been shackled to an inept administration. “The overarching problem has been the failure to have a clear national strategy, a national plan, and consistent communication. Everything really stems from that,” he said. That's a common refrain and the gist of the article. But it's helpful to zoom out. At the end of WWII, the US stood as the only intact industrial producer. It parleyed this win into a decades-long economic/military/political advantage. Through a collection of unsavory attitudes, the country began to think of itself as different in some magical way. The reverence toward WWII as the last "good" war has kept the focus on winning WWIII for over 70 years. The belief that somehow we're special has made it impossible to look at actually solving domestic problems or even act internationally. This mix fed directly into a world view in which problems come from abroad. You see it with The Wall and immigration policy. You see it with the focus on foreign election interference. When there's a problem, its source more likely than not falls outside US borders. The marginalization we see with CDC can be found in a wide range of American institutions: the military; the space program; regulatory agencies including FDA, FAA, and EPA; the educational system; Congress; the White House; even recently agriculture. The failure of these institutions, combined with exceptionalism borne of a military victory 75 years ago, has led to a broad abdication of responsibility. You can see this in how the US spends money. Consider the US Federal budget. Over 85% of expenditures fall into three categories: benefits/entitlements; military; and interest payments, in that order. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... This has been a bipartisan effort that predates 2016 by decades. The latest incarnation is just one station on a very long railroad.
mnm1 6y ago
The CDC is an executive agency and therefore under the ultimate control of the presidency. There is no way that this was not orchestrated from the top by an ignorant president. This isn't stupidity. It's malice. Even if the CDC wanted to do better, they can't. They can't provide messaging or testing or anything against the wishes of the white house. Want to force everyone to wear masks? Can't because it'll embarrass the president. What is the point of even having such an institution when all of its actions can be overridden by a mad man determined to only advance his selfish agenda, an agenda that clearly does not include dealing with this virus in any way? The failure of the CDC has been catastrophic, but there's no way things would have turned out this way had they had free reign to implement proper policies based on science.

159 points by SirLJ 6y ago

I hope we do a serious review of the cdc when this is all over. For all the money we give them, they totally failed to "control" the outbreak. It feels like it's devolved into an academic institution and we have enough of those.

marcinzm 6y ago
When your boss gives you insane directions and ignores any advice you give that they don't like, what do you expect?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
vikramkr 6y ago
No, it's worse. It devolved into a political institution. Any academic institution would have trivially been able to get the PCR test right (and academic institutions did). Bur our agencies gave into political pressures, were defunded and declared in critical moments, etc, leading to the failure of the federal government we see now
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >gave into political pressures People don't like getting fired, blame the politicians for threatening and firing anyone who disagrees with them, don't blame the people whose jobs were in jeopardy.
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    Good point. Might be better phrased as "were overtaken by political pressure" or the like
  - jonplackett 6y ago
    This same thing happened here in the UK (with similar results). Scientists scared of being ostracised if they spoke against the government. So they just went along with all the dumb decisions. We also have an group of scientists ‘Sage’ who are meant to be our best minds, who gave similarly useless and inconsistent advice because it was politicised.
    - hardlianotion 6y ago
      What are you relying on for evidence that this happened as you describe?
      - jonplackett 6y ago
        There was an interview with one of the scientists who laid it all out. He has terminal cancer himself and therefore said he doesn’t care about future access.
        hardlianotion 6y ago
        If it was in text, can you provide a link to it?
  - watwut 6y ago
    While I think that politicians are primary people to blame, I dont think the "I was afraid for my job" is good enough answer from high level leadership figures. That answer is acceptable from janitor or low level worker. I think that culturally, both in business and in politics, we are locked in set of values that makes opposition or disagreement against someone higher in hierarchy or with power as inappropriate and subservience as virtue. It then amounts to massive system of enablers who feel good about themselves and even criticize non-enablers wherever narcissist appears. We praise people who manage to climb the ladder no matter how they got there and what they do there. We devalue people who make ethical decisions when said decision hurts their career.
iagovar 6y ago
IDK the US that well, but if you don't have coercitive power over politicians what can you do. I'm aware that CDC has been criticized for other stuff as well, but in the end they seem to not have that much power. In my country (Spain) it has been a shitshow. Everyone who warned about the upcoming situation was ridiculed and/or insulted in a coordinated effort between government and media. Now the same people is being called captain after the fact. It's pretty sad to see, and I've been subject to this myself despite not being a public figure. Everything has turned into a political shitshow. When you have medical professionals in TV insisting that the government is right, and that this is just a flu, when you have your lead epidemiologist in TV with absurd claims, when you have your OSHA-spanish-equivalent in National Police fired for buying masks (and the list goes on and on), then how can anyone trust the institutions. I mean, my regional government which is corrupt, and sometimes hilariously inept has done a better job. What the *@^- man.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  > IDK the US that well If I can offer a piece of advice in that direction, it is to remember that the US is in fact a union of 50 states, and those states actually have a fair amount of power. The federal government, as powerful as it appears to be, really does lack authority in many areas. While they could absolutely have done a 1000% better job leading the response to the coronavirus, it was always going to fall mostly on the states to do the actual heavy lifting. It's the nature of our political system.
  - TomSwirly 6y ago
    And yet America managed two world wars just fine. Speaking from the Netherlands, it seems clear that about 40% of Americans lost their marbles in this grand collective paranoid fantasy starting around Nixon, growing through Reagan, and then really taking off around the end of the W. Bush administration. They started to believe these terrible and terribly false things about their fellow citizens, about science, about pretty well everything. And they purchase hundreds of millions of weapons. I can't see how it will possibly end well.

manicdee 6y ago

Clearly it was the CDC at fault here, not a few hand picked bureaucrats, not the chain of command, not a president with a penchant for firing people who challenge his authority. What a poorly concocted article. The least the author could do so remind people of the “starve the beast” approach to public utilities that the Republicans have been pursuing for decades. Nope, we’ll just throw the entire CDC under a bus.

j4yav 6y ago
For what it's worth, and despite the title, when I read this article the message I took away is exactly the one you are describing.
- dmix 6y ago
  It is Buzzfeed after all.
  - andreareina 6y ago
    I've found the Buzzfeed content that makes it on here to be pretty good. Which is weird, it is Buzzfeed after all. I don't think it's just the HN selection effect, as P(liked|Buzzfeed) > P(liked|HN).
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      BuzzfeedNews in particular makes a regular appearance because it is a world-class journalism organization. It does not seem to share much with Buzzfeed.
  - paul7986 6y ago
    Yeah more crappy for profit media spreading outrage. The news/media is always negative ...tired of it and tuned it out/enjoying life without it!
unityByFreedom 6y ago
Agreed, we’ve all watched the president say all the wrong things at the wrong times during this episode. I don’t doubt he is pulling the wrong strings behind the scenes too.

vikramkr 6y ago

Over the past few years a series of American agencies have lost their reputation and world standing. The FAA with the 737 max, the CDC with the test, the FDA with testing regulation and hydroxychloroquine. Its important to have institutions that work, but we've spent years deliberately gutting them and undervaluing them. All that money spent on the military and homeland security, and in the end we were caught utterly unprepared for the greatest national security threat of the past few decades. Even though we have more aircraft carriers than makes sense to have, we'd rather build another one than invest in crucial infrastructure such as strong regulatory agencies and science infrastructure. And we get to pay the price of those misplaced priorities as we barrel towards 200,000 dead. Hopefully this serves as a sort of wakeup call.

jamesrom 6y ago
Without distracting from you central point (which I very much agree with), please read the science around hydroxychloroquine, not the news. It works best taken with Zinc, and early when symptoms first present.
- ibarea277 6y ago
  No. This has been disproven by the only good studies we have. Even with zinc and early, it has not been shown to have any effect.
  - jamesrom 6y ago
    There are zero studies that disprove zinc + early has a strong effect. You are wrong. Also, the lancet study was retracted for flawed methodology, other studies show slight benefit of hydroxychloroquine. There are zero studies that show it has no effect.
    - nl 6y ago
      https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/05/the-recovery-trial-reports-on-hydroxychloroquine https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/05/th... There's no studies yet. But there aren't any preliminary results that look promising, and the only people who think it is promising also thought hydroxychloroquine was. So it's pretty unlikely it's going to do anything.

C19is20 6y ago

The article started off convincingly "On January 17th...", but i gave up after "....the world’s most trusted public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,...". If the sentence had've been "...the world’s most trusted public health agency, [in The United States (well, maybe)]", I would have perhaps considered reading more.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
Just wondering what you would nominate for the worlds most trusted public health agency? Maybe the WHO?

mensetmanusman 6y ago

This is my favorite chart: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-million?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~USA~SWZ~NOR~ITA~DEU~FIN~FRA~CAN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-mill...

pgrote 6y ago
Why is it your favorite chart?
- drocer88 6y ago
  Presumably it is the spike in U.S. deaths on 26 June. The text in the mouseover does say that states added probable deaths on that date.
pinkfoot 6y ago
Best they rename Swaziland to its new name "eSwatini" before the woke find out!
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Being offended by completely speculative offence theoretically been taken by ill-defined third parties is one of the Internet's weirder trends.

chasing 6y ago

At the moment we're well beyond the CDC. We have a President and his various acolyte governors who have so utterly botched and politicized our COVID-19 response that many people won't take the most basic steps to protect themselves and those around them. It's maddening and leaves those of us who are trying to do the right thing feel totally unprotected and unsupported, especially in states like Texas and Florida. The CDC may have made missteps, but there's no way it can possibly operate as well as it should in this political climate.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Of course there'll be politics on an issue of great social importance. That's supposed to be the point of having a CDC, that they can offer respected, apolitical advice on what we need to do. When they fail catastrophically, we inevitably fall back to the normal strategy for resolving disputes about what our society should do, which is politics.
- someguydave 6y ago
  Looking at the HN comments apparently nobody wants to believe that civil servants can fail unless hindered by the political bosses, and that Presidents are personally responsible for what 2.8 million federal employees do all day. I wonder if they blame the Queen in the U.K.?
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    The queen isn't in charge of the civil service. People in Britain absolutely do blame the cabinet (the UK's executive) and particularly the prime minster when they fuck up, yes. I mean, obviously.
    - someguydave 6y ago
      You should watch “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” for reasons why you shouldn’t believe the elected politicians have anything to do with what the UK government actually does.

victorbstan 6y ago

I haven’t seen any mention in the article about political interference. Consider Trumps policies and you’ll see why all these organizations are failing. He’s destroying them.

aalexxjjamess 6y ago

Who trusted the CDC in the first place? The US healthcare system has been compromised by rampant profiteering for a long time.

_jal 6y ago
This is a bit like blaming fire fighters for your disagreements with your fire insurance issuer. They may indeed both suck, but blaming one for the failure of the other doesn't make much sense.

cityofdelusion 6y ago

The pandemic has done a great job of highlighting weaknesses inherit to democratic governments. Populism and demagoguery, combined with rewarding loyalty and punishing dissidents. A dysfunctional democratic republic isn’t very different from an autocracy. I suspect during times like this it might even weaker, since you end up with no national unity. You can’t deal with a pandemic effectively in this kind of political environment.

loraa 6y ago

This is exactly what happens when you have a society afraid of hiring the right people for the job. You end up with people that can't properly run an organization.

b0sk 6y ago

This is classic starve the beast. There is one party that continuously tries to gut government institutions - like putting Betsy Devos to head education, Wheeler to head EPA etc etc and then has the gall to say that government institutions don’t work Who gutted the pandemic response unit?

ausbah 6y ago
Trump, Trump did. Edit: Trump's administration did request funding to the "pandemic response team", set up by the Obama administration, be cut. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
- emmelaich 6y ago
  Obama cut it too. Until Ebola.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    Which was handled before it made its way to the US in any significant capacity. Imagine Trump had taken clear and decisive action against COVID in January.
    - emmelaich 6y ago
      Hindsight is easy. > Imagine Trump had taken clear and decisive action against COVID in January Like the travel ban, which he announced on Jan 31?
      - darkerside 6y ago
        Of course hindsight is easy. Does that mean we shouldn't make use of it? And yes, like the travel ban, which clearly was the wrong solution for the problem. I don't blame the Trump administration for failing to predict the future, but I do see that they willfully ignored bad news over and over again and in fact continue to do so even today, which is completely unconscionable.

ed-209 6y ago

"Believing people without symptoms didn't spread the virus, the agency limited testing, discouraged masking..." This is false by Fauci's own account (see below interview) in which he states mask wearing was discouraged in order to secure availability for health workers. This is no small distinction as it raises questions about the importance of public trust/credibility during a health crisis. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0XHC5Kxxv_w https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0XHC5Kxxv_w

DanBC 6y ago
Can you link to the meta-analysis or RCT of mask wearing that were already published in March, or April, or June? But also, see this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/world/europe/coronavirus-spread-asymptomatic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/world/europe/coronavirus-...
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  for covid in particular? it was widely known generally that masks reduce the spread of that class of virus.
- afthonos 6y ago
  Common sense dictates that the base belief should be “something that prevents my breath from going as far should be effective at reducing spread of an airborne illness.” The null hypothesis should be that masks help; alternatively, the prior should favor masks.
Icedcool 6y ago
This is critical. Personally as a result I’ve lost trust with the organization, and the statements they make.
ReticentVole 6y ago
There are a minimal number of excess deaths now associated with COVID, so what is the problem? Allowing the community to acquire immunity naturally during Summer is a good way to minimise the spread of the virus come Winter. COVID severity seems heavily linked with Vitamin D levels, so lockdown during Summer would possibly have been counter-productive for the general population. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Why should Governments force people into lockdown for a virus with a CFR of 0.26%, marginally more deadly than the Flu at 0.1%? In particular, COVID deaths are concentrated at those aged 70+ with existing health conditions, so broad-scale lockdown and enforced mask wearing doesn't make sense - when targeted support for the elderly and vulnerable would be effective and less disruptive.

magwa101 6y ago

Leadership matters and affects everyone in and outside the organization.

LatteLazy 6y ago

The FDA, the CDC, WHO, our media and governments in the US and UK all need massive systematic reform if not outright replacement.

hourislate 6y ago

Woulda,shoulda,coulda... We live in a very different world today where someone can get on a plane and spread a virus across the planet in a matter of days. The only hope in containment was that the virus didn't spread easily. The best solution that I can think of that may have stopped the spread of the virus would've been giving everyone as many N95 masks as needed and make wearing them mandatory. Unfortunately it was far easier to spend 5 trillion $$$ on everything but that. These masks should have been free and available at every street corner of the USA, Subways, Buses, Airports, Supermarkets, etc. This isn't over and I don't know how it ends, but hopefully we'll come out the other side a little smarter and more prepared for the next one.

mav3rick 6y ago
The country still refuses to wear masks. Led behind a president who refuses to wear masks. This is literally the minimum he could do.

fortran77 6y ago

One of my pet peeves is the way nobody in the Government is caring about safety on air travel. I had to fly recently and someone near me was using a CPAP. Study after study shows that CPAP aerosolizes and spreads virus particles much more rapidly than normal respiration. Various Government agencies warn about this. - https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/wp-content/uploads/sites/197/2020/04/COVID-19-and-CPAP-Frequently-Asked-Questions.pdf https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/wp-content/uploads/sites/197... - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6832307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6832307/ - https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/hcp/aerosol.pdf https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/hcp/aero... - https://em.umaryland.edu/educational_pearls/3741/ https://em.umaryland.edu/educational_pearls/3741/ I've written (FedEx) to the CEOs of United and American. American didn't answer. United says they're required by law to allow people to use CPAP in-flight. There's no excuse for this. A person who needs a CPAP is already a high-risk for dying if they contract COVID. Do they want to take down everyone else with them?

sokoloff 6y ago
Americans with Disabilities Act may require the airlines to permit CPAP users to travel with the machine. It’s a tough call, but I don’t think “CPAP users are grounded indefinitely” is a fair and equitable position.
- TomSwirly 6y ago
  Where did "indefinitely" come from? That's a rather big jump, isn't it? It's the middle of a pandemic! Surely this is not the time to have a big germ-spraying machine in the middle of an airplane? CPAP users can wait until after the epidemic has stabilized to travel. I mean, everyone should avoid travelling. Given that the last two days in a row had record new cases and that three states today already had record numbers by midday, I'm... disconcerted at the lack of urgency that seems to be so common.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Given that it's the literal definition and common usage of “indefinitely” (without fixed or specified limit, not precise or exact), I don't think it's a big jump at all.

pgrote 6y ago

The United States doesn't have effective federal pandemic laws. The federal government looks to the states to manage their own health arenas and in those states many allow county level health departments to run with the ball. This is how you end up with one state doing x and another state next door doing y. It even gets to the county level with a county in a state doing x and the county next to it doing y during a pandemic. The CDC lost the battle before it began. It was heartening to see everyone sort of pull together to flatten the curve, but with what has happened during the phased reopenings, you'll never have American citizens do it again voluntarily.

nl 6y ago

I did some work with the CDC in 2014. They were organised and sensible and fantastic to work with, especially in comparison to local equivalents here in Australia. It's shocking to see how badly they failed.

o-__-o 6y ago
Fun fact,CDC was not prepared in 2014. FEMA appeared to have their shit together but completely boondoggled every disaster response in some way. It’s amazing we didn’t see this coming sooner
- nl 6y ago
  The project I was on was on Dengue Fever and Zika and they had their shit together on that. The data was clean, well organised, delivered quickly. Somehow between then and now that data collection side has fallen to bits to the point where efforts like the John Hopkins tracking project had to rely on the NYT open source collection on GitHub. I don't know who is responsible for pandemic response in the US, but back then everyone at CDC seemed competent and dedicated.
TomSwirly 6y ago
What might have happened to them since 2014, I wonder? And what are the other agencies like now? I don't even want to think about it.

olivermarks 6y ago

I can't take Buzzfeed 'news reporters' very seriously given the recent debacle with Zerohedge and subsequent plagiarism firing of Ryan Broderick. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-reporter-who-got-zerohedge-banned-twitter-fired-plagiarism https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-reporter-who-go... This CDC piece by Vergano & Hirji is more of an opinion and perception article than 'news reporting. I worry that click bait sites like 'Buzzfeed'(ridiculous name) are taken too seriously, especially when there is so much great well researched and argued material online that is often dismissed as 'conspiracy theories' etc etc

oneplane 6y ago

I wonder if that title is the best one to suit te reality. From an outsider it would look like control was 'taken' from, or never 'given to' the CDC, rather than lost.

aazaa 6y ago

> Frieden, the former CDC chief, argued that the agency failed largely because it has been shackled to an inept administration. “The overarching problem has been the failure to have a clear national strategy, a national plan, and consistent communication. Everything really stems from that,” he said. That's a common refrain and the gist of the article. But it's helpful to zoom out. At the end of WWII, the US stood as the only intact industrial producer. It parleyed this win into a decades-long economic/military/political advantage. Through a collection of unsavory attitudes, the country began to think of itself as different in some magical way. The reverence toward WWII as the last "good" war has kept the focus on winning WWIII for over 70 years. The belief that somehow we're special has made it impossible to look at actually solving domestic problems or even act internationally. This mix fed directly into a world view in which problems come from abroad. You see it with The Wall and immigration policy. You see it with the focus on foreign election interference. When there's a problem, its source more likely than not falls outside US borders. The marginalization we see with CDC can be found in a wide range of American institutions: the military; the space program; regulatory agencies including FDA, FAA, and EPA; the educational system; Congress; the White House; even recently agriculture. The failure of these institutions, combined with exceptionalism borne of a military victory 75 years ago, has led to a broad abdication of responsibility. You can see this in how the US spends money. Consider the US Federal budget. Over 85% of expenditures fall into three categories: benefits/entitlements; military; and interest payments, in that order. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... This has been a bipartisan effort that predates 2016 by decades. The latest incarnation is just one station on a very long railroad.

mnm1 6y ago

The CDC is an executive agency and therefore under the ultimate control of the presidency. There is no way that this was not orchestrated from the top by an ignorant president. This isn't stupidity. It's malice. Even if the CDC wanted to do better, they can't. They can't provide messaging or testing or anything against the wishes of the white house. Want to force everyone to wear masks? Can't because it'll embarrass the president. What is the point of even having such an institution when all of its actions can be overridden by a mad man determined to only advance his selfish agenda, an agenda that clearly does not include dealing with this virus in any way? The failure of the CDC has been catastrophic, but there's no way things would have turned out this way had they had free reign to implement proper policies based on science.