4 ms·

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'

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.

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.