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How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

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Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#301

Post by capableweb »

js2 wrote: post #300
capableweb wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The U.S. likes to think of itself as the world leader. Yeah, we in the rest of the world is very aware of that and frankly a bit tired of it. But my grief about that is nowhere as big as South American or countries in the middle east. > the U.S. could and should have provided global leadership Realistically, I don't don't think the US would be able to provide global leadership. Your leaders were denying that this o…

When I wrote "could and should have provided global leadership," I was referring to an alternate reality where my country elected Hillary Clinton.

When I wrote "we in the rest of the world is very aware of that and frankly a bit tired of it" I wasn't referring to any particular person, could be Trump, could be Clinton or could be Obama. No one except the US wants the US to keep playing world police/leader.

This is the time to work together, not for one country to be the leader.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#302

Post by js2 »

capableweb wrote: post #301
js2 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I wrote "could and should have provided global leadership," I was referring to an alternate reality where my country elected Hillary Clinton.

When I wrote "we in the rest of the world is very aware of that and frankly a bit tired of it" I wasn't referring to any particular person, could be Trump, could be Clinton or could be Obama. No one except the US wants the US to keep playing world police/leader. This is the time to work together, not for one country to be the leader.

I want the U.S to be the best global partner it can in fighting this pandemic and that’s impossible under its current leadership. Leadership doesn't mean telling the rest of the world what to do or being its cop. Leadership means the sorts of things outlined here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/opinion/coronavirus-mcchr...

> This is the time to work together,

Agreed. Best of luck in Spain.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#303

Post by AndrewBissell »

In late January my wife and daughter visited Disneyland, and there were a handful of COVID-19 cases reported in SoCal around the same time. On the Sunday they were due to fly back, my daughter came down with a very strong cough (she said it was even "hurting her throat") and a high fever of around 102F. We had been following the outbreak in China and my wife called the CDC to inquire about getting her tested for COVID-19.

They said they had no ability to get her tested, that we should not be concerned at all that it might actually be COVID-19, and she should visit a clinic. The clinic said it was probably just the flu, and told her to go ahead and fly back but to wear a mask.

This was absolutely criminal incompetence on the CDC's part.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#304

Post by tdfx »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #89
tdfx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the casual observer point of view, it appears only some Asian governments have been able to competently handle this crisis. It appears we're going to learn the hard way things that China, South Korea, etc. understood through intuition: (1) Widespread testing is key. Testing symptomatic people is too little, too late. (2) You can't rely on people to self-quarantine. (3) Infected people need to be isolated from th…

> From the casual observer point of view, it appears only some Asian governments have been able to competently handle this crisis. Anything I’ve read indicates China screwed up at almost every step only to have to do what the rest of the world is being forced to do now. Axios did a good timeline that leads me to believe the Chinese aren’t that special and if anything their government acted in such a way that doomed t…

Sure, the provincial government screwed up pretty badly, but when the central government locked everything down their response was unprecedented and remarkably thorough. It's important to separate the two different responses. And it's the second, central government response that seems to have suppressed the outbreak.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#305

Post by NotSammyHagar »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #264
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's terrible that politicians in the us at least were doing their utmost to say this isn't a real problem because they didn't want to hurt the stock market and impact their re-election changes. But there's another side to testing things to failure in the real world, people can die. There are vulnerable people of every stripe. Unlike me they may barely get enough food, barely be able to pay that apt that depends…

> Some stress testing is good, but how to do it without killing the vulnerable. Less stress, more often. I think regular random border closures or brief, targeted disruptions of small parts of supply chains would do wonders to curb over-JIT-ting of the economy, while not hurting too many people too much. That said, I worry it's too little - it doesn't address head-on the incentives that create vulnerable supply chain…

For the past few years we've had almost random border closures, I hadn't thought of it that way. But they do expose horrors, like the kidnappers that take people away when they are turned away from the us border into a hellhole or organized extortion or we kill you.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#306

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

tdfx wrote: post #304
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the casual observer point of view, it appears only some Asian governments have been able to competently handle this crisis. Anything I’ve read indicates China screwed up at almost every step only to have to do what the rest of the world is being forced to do now. Axios did a good timeline that leads me to believe the Chinese aren’t that special and if anything their government acted in such a way that doomed t…

Sure, the provincial government screwed up pretty badly, but when the central government locked everything down their response was unprecedented and remarkably thorough. It's important to separate the two different responses. And it's the second, central government response that seems to have suppressed the outbreak.

You wonder though how we're supposed to trust anything that's reported by the CCP when they're engaging in propaganda blaming the US and Italy for the virus. As well as when there's a documented history of shooting the messenger, human rights violations, free speech violations, etc.

Maybe they are effective - it remains to be seen in an internationally vetted way. And they also had an opportunity to disseminate globally that they had doctors reporting issues, but instead they maintained until at least the middle of January (this started in November) that human-to-human transmission wasn't documented.

Nothing they say inspires confidence given their history and current actions, especially when it's ostensibly at odds with the experiences of almost the entire rest of the world with higher living standards and more uniformly modern systems.

Increasingly as time goes on, I have a harder time believing this is anything other than another shooting the messenger, Chernobyl-style event from an oppressive, information-deprived regime.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#307

Post by shalmanese »

asiachick wrote: post #167

I'm still trying to understand why Japan's numbers are so low. You can argue they aren't testing but if the infection rate is similar then the death rate should be similar was well regardless of testing or not. They aren't staying home. Restaurants, bars, and events are still open. Trains are still packed at rush hour. Festivals are still happening. They're planning on starting school in April. I can only see a few p…

One useful "sanity check" for countries under testing is to check the records of imported cases from countries doing rigorous contact tracing and publishing their data. So far, Singapore has 2 confirmed cases arising from Japanese travellers and Taiwan has 1:

https://www.againstcovid19.com/singapore/dashboard https://www.againstcovid19.com/taiwan/dashboard

This is vs the ~110 British cases and ~50 American cases the two countries have seen collectively.

Flight volume from Japan to both countries is normally quite substantial so this is evidence to suggest that Japan's case is not low solely due to undertesting.

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#308

Post by cvlasdkv »

mygo wrote: post #293
true_religion wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the majority of masks manufactures are in China because that’s where the population regularly wears them for the simple flu. Understandably the Chinese government would be unwilling to contract their strategic supply of manufacturing out when they need it for themselves.

China offered us lower prices, and the lower prices were great. But right now China isn’t selling us those low priced masks. And we do not need China to produce masks. We know from basic economic theory that there are manufacturers who would either ramp up production or go into production if the demand increased. With China seemingly out of the US mask business for who knows how long there are also fewer available su…

> We know from basic economic theory that there are manufacturers who would either ramp up production or go into production if the demand increased.

I'd be hesitant to use Economics 101 theories as a way to model the real world. While they are intuitive theories there is a reason they are 101 theories and even "expert" economists are often wrong. :)

These lines of thought are often similar to how people point to evolutionary reasoning because of how intuitively the "survival of the fittest" explanation comes into play (esp. wrt the capitalist society we live in).

Re: How the CDC’s restrictive testing guidelines hid the coronavirus epidemic

#309

Post by mygo »

cvlasdkv wrote: post #308
mygo wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China offered us lower prices, and the lower prices were great. But right now China isn’t selling us those low priced masks. And we do not need China to produce masks. We know from basic economic theory that there are manufacturers who would either ramp up production or go into production if the demand increased. With China seemingly out of the US mask business for who knows how long there are also fewer available su…

> We know from basic economic theory that there are manufacturers who would either ramp up production or go into production if the demand increased. I'd be hesitant to use Economics 101 theories as a way to model the real world. While they are intuitive theories there is a reason they are 101 theories and even "expert" economists are often wrong. :) These lines of thought are often similar to how people point to evol…

That’s like saying we shouldn’t use the theory of gravity to explain why objects drop because it doesn’t hold at the speed of light. Well, it’s a fundamental theory for a reason, and it holds up a whole lot of the time in practice. You don’t need quantum physics to know which direction your phone will go when you let it go.

But in any case, even tossing that basic fundamental economic theory aside, what about the rest of my comment? Is it not true that we would have more masks in production today if we started producing them in January?

If there was enough additional demand, you bet there would be more production. Let’s say someone in January is suddenly willing to write a 10 billion dollar check for 100,000 masks. Not one additional mask would be produced before March? Because people are scrambling to procure masks now. And additional masks are being produced and even donated.

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