It's really hard not to wonder if there is a political motivation to break the Federal government so that even the U.S. left would seek to devolve it.
This has been an explicit aim of the American right since the Reagan administration.
Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
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Re: Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
#12The health and welfare of Americans would be greatly improved if the FDA was abolished.
Re: Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
#13It's really hard not to wonder if there is a political motivation to break the Federal government so that even the U.S. left would seek to devolve it.
This has been an explicit aim of the American right since the Reagan administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
Issues like the one posted don't seem to be consequences of financial or other neglect from the federal government thought. There is definitely something else going on here.
Re: Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
#14Government gonna government
Re: Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
#15The health and welfare of Americans would be greatly improved if the FDA was abolished.
I've noticed that this is a position which many people will reflexively consider nuts. I think this may change over time and turn into a partisan issue. Probably one in which the left takes the wrong side, sadly.
Re: Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
#16It's really hard not to wonder if there is a political motivation to break the Federal government so that even the U.S. left would seek to devolve it.
The FDA is pointlessly obstructing our coronavirus response, everyone knows they're doing this, but there are no serious proposals to do so much as temporarily bench them. If it's an accelerationist strategy, it's not a very good one because we're not accelerating towards devolution.
Re: Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
#17So this is mass non professional nasal swab testing and FDA don’t like it. I see.
Re: Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
#18The health and welfare of Americans would be greatly improved if the FDA was abolished.
I've noticed that this is a position which many people will reflexively consider nuts. I think this may change over time and turn into a partisan issue. Probably one in which the left takes the wrong side, sadly.
I think communicating positions like this is a major unsolved political messaging issue. How do you say "this government agency is unreformable and we need to get rid of it" without implying that the government should completely ignore the agency's responsibilities? It'd make things a lot easier if there were a good way to phrase that.
Re: Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
#19> An FDA spokesperson explains that anything that requires a person to take samples themselves, at home, raises concerns. For example, the agency wants to ensure that samples remain stable if they end up spending a long time in a hot vehicle on the way to a lab. Not exactly a baffling secret. At home sample collection wasn't included in the guidelines, sounds like FDA is evaluating and may still give a go ahead.
Yea it seems pretty clear to me. If samples degrade during transport, you could get false negatives. I can understand the FDAs concern here.
Re: Scientists baffled by decision to stop a pioneering coronavirus testing project
#20Wasn't this the result of the project changing its scope to be outside of what the FDA authorized? They put out a press release [1] on May 14 which explained why they were being shutdown--the FDA authorization allowed them to collect samples but not to return the results. By starting to share the individual test results back to those who provided the samples the program was no longer operating within its authorization and was shut down until a new authorization could be secured.
While I don't agree with the FDA on their response, it seems disingenuous that this article doesn't mention the reason why the program was shut down. It is clearly much riskier to provide individuals with their test results than to collect aggregate data. Consider for example if you gave 1 false negative, and that person then took that false negative as an excuse to return to work -- potentially infecting many more. With aggregate data a few false positives/negatives could throw off the statistics but the standards the tests need to be held to for survey purposes are certainly different than those being used for diagnostic purposes.