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Call me "shameful, cynical [and] fearmongering" but I don't think the ineffectiveness of the CDC on Ebola is due to lack of resources or that $25 million will m
by spikels 12y ago
Call me "shameful, cynical [and] fearmongering" but I don't think the ineffectiveness of the CDC on Ebola is due to lack of resources or that $25 million will make a difference. They have a $6 billion plus annual budget ($25 million is a 0.4% increase) and rarely pay for the actual treatment of patients. Instead they are primarily supposed to do research and disseminate information in advance of health threats.
I think it is pretty clear the the CDC has become just another calcified government bureaucracy who ordinarily gets very little oversight or feedback from the outside world. As they recently admitted - just like the Houston nurse they blamed - they cannot even follow their own safety protocols (anthrax and H5N1 debacles) because of their toxic culture[1]. It is a real challenge (perhaps impossible) to prevent these problems from developing in any large organization - including private sector firm (think big semi-monopolies) but even more so in government. More money could even make it worse as bigger bureaucracies are even less effective - just like putting more programmers on the failing project.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/us/after-lapses-cdc-admits-a-lax-culture-at-labs.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/us/after-lapses-cdc-admits...
- dreamweapon 12y agoThey have a $6 billion plus annual budget ($25 million is a 0.4% increase). That's why the Zucks made what's called a "targeted donation." Just because an agency has a budge for $X.y billion doesn't mean they can slosh it around to overloaded departments at the drop of a hat. Or are you proposing that the CDC just lay off half of the Atlanta office, and devote those resources to Ebola prevention?
- throwaway5752 12y agoI don't get it. There's 1 domestically transmitted case of Ebola. There are ~200 new cases of leprosy per year. How much more effective do you want them to be? And sticker shock aside, $6B is less that any annual super-pharma R&D budget that I was able to find in a brief search (Merck, Pfizer, GSK). And that is just R&D, not even SG&A. edit: look, they can fit all domestic rabies cases in a small table on a single page: http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/human_rabies.html http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/human_ra... The CDC is a bunch of miracle workers, in partnership with medical and pharmaceutical advances. Does anyone recall that no less than 100 years ago the US has a president that was partially paralyzed by a disease that afflicted 20K/yr that is now domestically eradicated?
- spikels 12y agoMake that 2 domestically transmitted cases of Ebola. http://online.wsj.com/articles/ebola-found-in-second-healthcare-worker-at-texas-hospital-1413365880 http://online.wsj.com/articles/ebola-found-in-second-healthc...