3 ms·

> For the current pandemic, they did not initially recommend masking because they could not justify it for the general population over the medical community. Th

> For the current pandemic, they did not initially recommend masking because they could not justify it for the general population over the medical community. They wanted to avoid a tragedy of the commons of PPE. The covid19 prevalence was low... I posted links in this thread which discuss how the CDC was negligent in studying the possibility of asymptomatic spread early in the pandemic, and knowingly released test kits that were faulty. What this means is that the CDC didn't actually know what the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was in the US in the early days of the pandemic. It was flying totally blind and as we eventually learned, the virus was silently spreading and establishing a foothold throughout parts of the country while the CDC was assuring Americans it had everything under control and the threat was low. My family and friends in the US were able to stock up on medical masks and N95s in January before they were pulled from the shelves because I was living in Taiwan, where it was abundantly clear in January that there was a very serious respiratory pathogen on the loose.

jasonlotito 5y ago
I wonder how much of that was impacted by the current administration at the time.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  From the articles I posted: > Yet Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions - or inaction - by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff. > In addition to learning of the early warning, reviewers determined the Respiratory Viruses Diagnostic Laboratory, run by a highly regarded scientist named Stephen Lindstrom, was beset with problems, including "process failures, a lack of appropriate recognized laboratory quality standards, and organizational problems related to the support and management of a laboratory supporting an outbreak response," the review said. I know it's in vogue in America to blame everything on the current administration (this happens on both/all sides of the aisle) but in reality, institutional rot is responsible for a lot more of the shortcomings in institutional failures. There is an obvious decline that has been taking place in many agencies for decades, across both Democratic and Republican administrations.

jasonlotito 5y ago

I wonder how much of that was impacted by the current administration at the time.

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
From the articles I posted: > Yet Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions - or inaction - by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff. > In addition to learning of the early warning, reviewers determined the Respiratory Viruses Diagnostic Laboratory, run by a highly regarded scientist named Stephen Lindstrom, was beset with problems, including "process failures, a lack of appropriate recognized laboratory quality standards, and organizational problems related to the support and management of a laboratory supporting an outbreak response," the review said. I know it's in vogue in America to blame everything on the current administration (this happens on both/all sides of the aisle) but in reality, institutional rot is responsible for a lot more of the shortcomings in institutional failures. There is an obvious decline that has been taking place in many agencies for decades, across both Democratic and Republican administrations.