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CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

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Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#121

Post by aazaa »

The damage will be much longer lasting than this.

The Chinese bought the US precious weeks to prepare while it locked down vast numbers of its own population.

The disaster could have been prevented through a vigorous testing/quarrantine program in Washington and California.

At every step of the way the US either bungled testing, or actively discouraged testing. It's been nothing but lies and mistakes from the start.

Like most American catastrophes, this one will only be slowly understood many years after the fact. There will be Congressional investigations and fact finding rituals.

In the end it will come down to three things:

1. Pandemic preparedness was not taken seriously by the incoming administration.

2. Testing was screwed up from the start and never found its footing.

3. The administration actively discouraged testing through both political pressure (e.g. W. Virginia "doing a tremendous job") and rationing of tests.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#122

Post by electriclove »

throwaway122378 wrote: post #83
h2odragon wrote: post #47

Where was the media in this? Lots of scare stories about potential pandemics back to January, in the US media, but I dont recall much if any "the CDC is fucking up / not testing" coverage. Of course that kind of thing was probably being said in the froth of the fringe and conspiracy theorists, but thats all "fake news" and unmentionable now.

On 1/24/20 the WHO said there’s no human to human transmission of covid-19 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20 They are to blame as much as anyone else

WHO deserves a ton of blame. For one, they refused to call it a pandemic and actually pressured experts who disagreed to take back what they said and then called it a Pandemic the very next day. https://twitter.com/RizaHawkeye8/status/1241415090097684480

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#123

Post by Symmetry »

eyegor wrote: post #99
merpnderp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in the initial days, the CDC had a valid point. The W.H.O/Chinese test wasn't that reliable (at the time) and it wasn't unreasonable for the US to make their own. It wasn't until week after week went by, with the CDC straight up lying to the FDA/HHS, that the real failure became apparent. The second the CDC realized it wasn't up to the job, it should have begged the FDA to allow labs/companies to make their o…

> Because in the initial days, the CDC had a valid point. The W.H.O/Chinese test wasn't that reliable (at the time) and it wasn't unreasonable for the US to make their own. How would this be an excuse not to start using the WHO tests while the CDC was developing theirs? Even if the test was hot garbage (as you imply), surely something is better than nothing.

The CDC test was mostly pretty good. My impression from This Week In Virology was that some aspects were too clever which is why it took so long to come out but the parts of it that involved the detection of SARS-Covid-2 worked just fine. The problem was that there were some bad reagents in the part of the test that looked for other respiratory illnesses so the third part of the test that wasn't directly concerned with the Coronavirus didn't work. And it would be illegal to run a test that didn't conform to protocol - simply skipping the relatively useless part of the test that didn't work.

The CDC deserves some blame for taking 3 weeks to produce a gold-plated test that had a part that didn't work but I think we ought to blame the FDA more for preventing any of the qualified labs from doing any tests until the CDC finished taking its sweet time to make a test and then that test didn't work to FDA standards. There are tons of competent hospitals, universities, and companies that could have made a test to WHO standards in under a week and gotten us testing early.

Well, the FDA managed to prevent most testing but Dr. Helen Chu was willing to break the law and alerted us to the Seattle outbreak. She saved countless lives and I hope she doesn't go to jail for it.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#124

Post by Aeolun »

kiba wrote: post #106
omgJustTest wrote: post #61

This article does not mention the WHO offered tests to the US before the CDC decided it should make its own[1]. This alone should have been enough to bring impeachment charges against public officials, for criminal neglect. If the WHO had proven these in China, and you have no other alternative, it make sense to do both 1. buy tests you know are in active use and 2. make your own tests if needed. Someone at the CDC m…

Can we stop threatening criminal negligence charge for every single mistakes people make? It's not going to improve performance in the next pandemic if people are afraid of doing their job or engages in ass covering.

Accepting any kind of help in a crisis seems reasonable.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#125

Post by nicoburns »

013a wrote: post #93
grey-area wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This lacklustre response is still going on, the federal government simply isn’t taking this seriously. Trump saying things will open up in just a few weeks and it’s important to restart the economy will cost thousands of lives by encouraging states not to lock down. Full lock down is now the only way out, and as it has spread, that will take months. Testing needs to massively ramp up too. 2000 people died in one day…

There is a very real, if hidden, cost to economic suppression, especially in the United States where social safety nets are few and far between. There's a line in the Big Short: "Whenever unemployment drops 1%, 40,000 people die". Surprisingly; this is more or less true, not movie drama. Its obviously difficult to draw causation between these two things, but there is causation. People have reduced access to healthcar…

> especially in the United States where social safety nets are few and far between.

These things can change. The UK has suddenly grown a safety net that covers 80% of income for people who aren't working due to the coronavirus. We've also taken the railway network into public ownership overnight. Both of which would have been unthinkable 3 months ago.

It's also possible to keep essential businesses open while shutting everything else. Most things are shutdown here, and... for the most part it doesn't make a lot of difference. I can still get food and petrol. I don't really need anything else.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#126

Post by asquabventured »

aazaa wrote: post #121

The damage will be much longer lasting than this. The Chinese bought the US precious weeks to prepare while it locked down vast numbers of its own population. The disaster could have been prevented through a vigorous testing/quarrantine program in Washington and California. At every step of the way the US either bungled testing, or actively discouraged testing. It's been nothing but lies and mistakes from the start.…

I don't understand this mentality when other Western Nations are going through the exact same thing.

Did the administration cause every other countries problems with containing the virus too?

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#127

Post by spaced-out »

ykevinator wrote: post #104

People are blaming trump and while I'm no fan, the cdc is an embarrassment. How many decades did they have to prepare for disease control?

I thought the whole reason we were putting this businessman in charge was because he's going to run things better? Now the government is running worse than ever and he's spreading misinformation on a regular basis.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#129

Post by electriclove »

aazaa wrote: post #121

The damage will be much longer lasting than this. The Chinese bought the US precious weeks to prepare while it locked down vast numbers of its own population. The disaster could have been prevented through a vigorous testing/quarrantine program in Washington and California. At every step of the way the US either bungled testing, or actively discouraged testing. It's been nothing but lies and mistakes from the start.…

Don't forget the mask shaming that was perpetuated in the US.

Re: CDC coronavirus testing decision likely to haunt nation for months to come

#130

Post by omgJustTest »

kiba wrote: post #106
omgJustTest wrote: post #61

This article does not mention the WHO offered tests to the US before the CDC decided it should make its own[1]. This alone should have been enough to bring impeachment charges against public officials, for criminal neglect. If the WHO had proven these in China, and you have no other alternative, it make sense to do both 1. buy tests you know are in active use and 2. make your own tests if needed. Someone at the CDC m…

Can we stop threatening criminal negligence charge for every single mistakes people make? It's not going to improve performance in the next pandemic if people are afraid of doing their job or engages in ass covering.

This logic is healthy, however limited here.

We had an infectious disease team consulting the president, it was removed. We had a CDC with 6-8bn dollars more funding when Trump took office. We have a president claiming currently that "the cure cannot be worse than the disease"... these are not a hypothetical threat and have direct and immediate consequences in the next months.

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