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

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

#41

Post by endogui »

chmod775 wrote: post #31
ransom1538 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this "half of annual discretionary spending". It is designed to confuse the fact that military spending is only %15. [1] https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/the-facts-on-medica...

I don't think spending more on military than the next 10 countries combined can be described as "only" in any way. The highest spender are the US, with $732.0 billion, followed by China with $261.0 billion, then India and Russia with $71.1 and $65.1 billion respectively.

The US is filling the role of the Roman Empire, securing trade routes to allow efficient scales of tech expertise and production. If that military is scaled back or shown to be obsolete/ineffectual, then globalism itself will come into question.

The dark ages were caused by the localizing of production, with local feifdoms losing access to specialized technical expertise. To some extent, this is what we see now with companies moving produuction back to North America.

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

#43

Post by hardlianotion »

jonplackett wrote: post #12
marcinzm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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.

What are you relying on for evidence that this happened as you describe?

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

#44

Post by ausbah »

b0sk wrote: post #38

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?

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/

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

#46

Post by andreareina »

dmix wrote: post #19
j4yav wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is Buzzfeed after all.

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).

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

#47

Post by drocer88 »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #35
jamesrom wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Provide links to that 'science' if you're going to claim it exists, including any corroborating studies.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v...

"This study provides the first in vivo evidence that zinc sulfate in combination with hydroxychloroquine may play a role in therapeutic management for COVID-19."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030698772...

"we hypothesize that CQ/HCQ plus zinc supplementation may be more effective in reducing COVID-19 morbidity and mortality than CQ or HCQ in monotherapy."

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mujeeb_Shittu4/publicat... roquine-against-SARS-CoV-2-may-require-Zinc-additives-A-better-synergy-for-future-COVID-19-clinical-trials.pdf

"We seek to draw the attention of the scientific community to the possibility of drastically reducing the effects of the vi-rus on the affected patients and improving clinical tri-als outcome through the synergistic action of zinc and chloroquine"

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rishad_Ahmed2/publicati...

"Thirdly, hydroxychloroquine acts as an ionophoric agent for Zinc ions and thus increases the influx of Zinc ions into the cytoplasm of host target cells regardless whether the host target cells are infected or not [10]. Zinc ions adhere to the RNA dependent RNA polymerase enzyme of the virus and stops COVID-19 polymerization intracellularly."

We do need follow up and repeated clinical trials.

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

#48

Post by jamesrom »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #35
jamesrom wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Provide links to that 'science' if you're going to claim it exists, including any corroborating studies.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v...

> In univariate analyses, zinc sulfate increased the frequency of patients being discharged home, and decreased the need for ventilation, admission to the ICU, and mortality or transfer to hospice for patients who were never admitted to the ICU. After adjusting for the time at which zinc sulfate was added to our protocol, an increased frequency of being discharged home (OR 1.53, 95% CI 1.12-2.09) reduction in mortality or transfer to hospice remained significant (OR 0.449, 95% CI 0.271-0.744). Conclusion: This study provides the first in vivo evidence that zinc sulfate in combination with hydroxychloroquine may play a role in therapeutic management for COVID-19.

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

#49

Post by watwut »

marcinzm wrote: post #8
vikramkr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>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.

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.

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

#50

Post by CydeWeys »

rayiner wrote: post #34
chmod775 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think spending more on military than the next 10 countries combined can be described as "only" in any way. The highest spender are the US, with $732.0 billion, followed by China with $261.0 billion, then India and Russia with $71.1 and $65.1 billion respectively.

Militaries are reliant on domestic production and labor. (Paying Chinese solider costs the government a fraction as much as an American soldier.) So instead of an exchange rate conversion, you should be doing a purchasing-power conversion. For these three countries, that means multiplying by 2x to 4x. Also, the US is particularly inefficient at capital spending. It costs us a billion dollars to build a mile of subway…

The majority of DoD's budget is not salaries. Only the salaries should be scaled in this way.

E.g. many other countries are buying our F-35s at the same price we are. Other countries simply can't get equally effective jet fighters, aircraft carriers, etc., at a third to a quarter of the price.

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