Those of us who think government should work, i.e., Democrats, are also ones who are willing to give government a break. The right-wing desire to shit on even the smallest mistake made by government — “mistakes” that are often distortions or outright fabrications — has made us less than eager to criticize government, because most government workers are doing their best, and government will be the solution to a lot of the problems that Democrats want to solve.
So, the CDC’s fuckup with the COVID-19 test, which is serious, is a tough one for Democrats to criticize, as it should be. The CDC is a world-class organization, creating a test quickly is a major scientific and biomedical engineering challenge, and it will go wrong once in a while despite best efforts of all involved. The decent thing to do is to not make a big deal about it, in the spirit of all of us pulling together in the face of a shared danger, and wait for a careful fact-finding investigation so we can all learn how it won’t happen again.
That may be our impulse, and it could be right, but I can’t help but think that decency by Democrats is always leveraged to full political advantage by the Republicans. Everybody knows that when the documents are revealed long after the fact, we’ll find that Trump stooges have downplayed the COVID-19 danger and pressured career bureaucrats to engage in a coverup. Whether or not Trumpers were directly responsible for the failure at the CDC, we know that every Trump budget has proposed CDC cuts. And we all know that, no matter what Democrats say, Trumpers will feign outrage that we’ve dared to criticize brave soldiers in the war against the virus while the battle is occurring, all while they do their best to blame any and all failures on Democrats.
The only real reason that might justify not going after Trumpers now would be to increase panic, but anyone watching the clown show that Trump & Co have put on so far knows damn well that they’re a bunch of fools, and fools playing with fire is a legitimate cause for deep concern. So why not go after them all hammer and tongs, starting now? I know it’s usually considered politically smart to wait until the dust settles, but Trump never does, so why should we?
Orange Is The New White
Way too fuckin’ late for that. The level of panic is off the charts.
Go after them as hard as you can. They fucked this up, it’s on Donald’s watch, and largely due to his idiot “policies”.
Chris Johnson
@Orange Is The New White: This. Nobody is fooled.
Lapassionara
As I understand it, there was a test available from WHO, and the CDC declined to use it, instead, devising one that turned out not to work.
i think we need to know who made that decision and why.
the lack of tests is the big issue right now.
Jeffro
Stick to criticizing trumpublican budget cuts to CDC (always noting that the cuts occurred in order to give rich folks and corporations tax cuts), any staff positions that went unfilled above the CDC’s usual vacancy rates, and outright lies by trumpov and his henchmen. Those are easy targets and we shouldn’t hesitate to knock the GOP around on all three sets of issues, especially since the outright lies will probably keep coming.
We can and should investigate further once we’ve won the election.
ETA: per Lapassionara’s comment about the WHO tests that were declined…ok, add that to the list. People should know who made that call and why, absolutely.
Btw I’m seeing an ad for an absolute joke of a ‘N95 Mask’ on the right of this site – the picture shows a mask that looks like a kid cut it out of construction paper, and it certainly wouldn’t keep out any germs.
Lapassionara
I have RA, the treatment of which lowers my immune system. So this is not an abstract question for me. I want competent people in charge, not cronies and lackeys.
Roger Moore
I think the big thing to do is to go after the failures by the CDC with both barrels, but try to lay the blame on political meddling by Trump and Co. rather than mistakes by CDC staff. This is a reasonable approach politically, and there’s already substantial evidence that it’s a correct assessment. Use the claims of political meddling in what should have been a medical/scientific process to justify a big, messy investigation.
MattF
Go after Trump, but be smart about it. You have to pick and choose the especially ripe objects de Trump.
ET
Democrats need to be tough but not make the CDC the whipping boy for all this countries COVID-19 failures. What part of this a failure on permanent CDC staff and what part is on the failure of the space where permanent CDC staff meet the political establishment up the food chain.
The tone of the organization is always set by the person(s) at the top. Not just on specific actions, but how people downstream deal with and respond to them. It has got to be hard, under tRump and the people he has put into various positions, for line staff to be given the room to do the job they know because they aren’t being allow the space and because they have been undercut in various ways from funding to bureaucratic maneuvering. Then there is the resident who is his (and everyone’s) worst enemy. They think you have put out one fire or how to message in a way that he doesn’t undercut, only to realize he started another fire because it suited his ego or because he is a damn idiot.
Served
We really need to be hammering the cover-up and the unhinged priorities of the administration. Bragging about low numbers that are the result of a lack of tests, the lies about progress, Santelli’s single-minded focus on the big business’s feelings about the stock market, and the complete disregard for the seriousness of the situation out of fear of hurting Trump’s feelings.
Just the exact sort of leadership that turns a crisis from bad to worse to worst. People are going to die because of this mismanagement on an administrative and executive level.
dmsilev
Donald Trump is the one who is out there saying that he has “a hunch” that the virus isn’t all that dangerous, that a vaccine will be available in the next few months, and that Everything Is Fine. Go after that. Go after Mike Pence and his “task force”.
Plenty of political targets to aim at, and they’re all worthy of the blame.
sdhays
According to Josh at TPM, the issue is not that there were problems with the CDC test. The issue is that there were lots of other tests available from university (and other) labs across the country, and the FDA sat on approving them for weeks or months. That’s inexcusable, and definitely a failure of leadership, and should be criticized now before the next failure takes over the news cycle. It’s a Katrina-like failure.
A Ghost To Most
Decency is wasted on roycohnicans. So is shame .
Jay
Jay
@sdhays:
reporting so far is that the CDC insisted on a 3rd test being added to the WHO protocol, but the 3rd test kits were produced in a contaminated lab and returned false positives and false negatives,
as a result, the tests distributed were useless,
one of many fails,…….
Frankensteinbeck
It’s not hard to go on the attack. Trump and his appointees told the CDC to focus on preventing the disease from entering from the outside, which prevented them from dealing with the fact it was already here. He did so for purely political reasons, because he would look bad if the disease was already in America.
Jay
Villago Delenda Est
Go after the Trump scum with absolutely no quarter offered. Right fucking now.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: Ripe objects you say? How about this one:
A House resolution to make Kudlow STFU on TV seems in order.
Cheryl Rofer
I see that several commenters have beaten me to it, but the problem seems to have been in the decision-making more than the technical side. Or for sure the decision-making preceded the technical problems.
Robert Redfield is Trump’s appointee to head the CDC, and not without controversy. We can focus the problems on him, and the media are bearing down on the lack of test kits today.
I asked a bunch of questions last night on Twitter, some of which bear on this.
rp
We should hammer Trump relentlessly for f**king up the response to the disease. Incompetence arguments are much more persuasive IMO than ideological ones for most Americans. The country really turned on Bush in his second term because of Katrina, the mismanagement of Iraq (NOT because invading in the first place was idiotic), and, later, the financial crisis.
And there’s no inconsistency with our view of good government — the point is that we need smart, responsible people in charge of the government because it’s important. It can’t be left to the amateurs.
JPL
CDC has to be careful, because they know trump will make additional cuts to their funding if they are not. They will take the entire blame.
Yutsano
@Lapassionara: It was Azar. Because no American pharma company makes it, therefore no profits for his friends. I don’t have proof of this now, but I bet once this is looked into that will be exactly what happened.
kindness
Don’t feel bad about pointing out the CDC’s mistakes. We’re the ones that are on their side. Trump has proposed halving their budget each budget he’s submitted. And while Trump hasn’t been successful at completely hollowing it out he did wipe out the rapid response department and he has reduced the CDC’s budget, personnel and resources. We will do a much better job come next January. For now….this is a Trump problem more than a CDC problem. Make sure we all point that out every single time.
Served
@Yutsano: I am dying to see Senator Warren hand this man his whole ass in a hearing.
sdhays
@Cheryl Rofer: One of the first questions should probably be “Does VP Dense know that thousands is less than millions?” I mean, maybe he just misspoke. He is from the state that almost set pi at 3, after all, so maybe he simply didn’t know that a million is more than a few thousand. //
Jay
@JPL:
if the Dump Administration is repeatably “attacked” on their CDC Budget Cuts, the gutting of Pandemic Research and Response Teams, their politicization of the outbreak rather than effective measures and other forms of mismanagement,
that gives the CDC “room” to say “fuck Dump, let’s do whats right”.
under close watch and focus, Dump isn’t going to make further cuts to the CDC.
Of course, that’s the norm in a country that doesn’t have an MSM desperately trying to “bothsides” and click bait the hell out of a pandemic, so yeah, you’re screwed.
Cheryl Rofer
A gazillion targets here.
@sdhays: I did not see that, but I can believe it.
Quicksand
Fixed
ziggy
@sdhays: also the case. This was a huge FU on so many levels. Not following WHO guidelines to keep the test simple. Keeping the testing guidelines too tight from the get go. Lying about when and how many tests would be available. Not letting other organizations develop and process tests. Hiding the number of tests completed.
The time for decency is long gone. People in affected areas are PISSED! Economic impacts will be horrific.
Yutsano
@Served: I would probably have to restart smoking after that. Something tells me the Democrats in Congress are not in a mood for bullshit.
Barbara
Wow, we liberals really are way too nice. Remember when Obama was blamed for a flu vaccine shortage that arose because manufacturers were trying to use a new technology that didn’t require the use of eggs? You don’t have to blame the CDC. You get to blame the captain of the ship and let him blame the CDC, and I am sure he will once it’s clear that blaming Obama won’t work. But here is a rundown of why yes, the CDC really is to blame.
The CDC devised its own test. Okay. Turned out that only the CDC’s Atlanta lab and one other could make it work correctly (too many false positives with third validation arm). CDC had choices — use WHO test, ignore the third validation arm, etc. CDC chose instead to limit testing to a subset of “high risk” people as it figured out the testing issue, while still requiring the use of CDC test. As Martin has been telling us, the states are now basically ignoring CDC tests and devising their own — UW, UC, Stanford, etc.
With regard to FDA, the issue is that once the CDC proclaimed a public health emergency, there are certain legal consequences, one of which is that the FDA has to approve diagnostic tests. This makes a certain amount of sense, because it ensures standardization in order to accurately determine the scope of the emergency. The problem is that the FDA is a type 1 error avoidance agency, which means it bends over backwards to avoid big errors, and more or less ignores type 2 errors — the bad things that continue happening because the product or test was not approved sooner. In a public health emergency, it is simply not acceptable to impose that kind of delay. I don’t think anyone submitted a test two months ago that hasn’t been approved, maybe two weeks ago. Basically, so far as I can tell, this problem was sorted once it became obvious.
So: Declare public health emergency that limits how states can implement their own testing, while at the same time requiring them to use a testing kit that doesn’t work, and then, as a fallback, limiting the testing protocol in a way that makes it all but certain the scope of the problem is not being identified, much less addressed.
realbtl
I’m struck by Macron of France saying everybody knows this is going to be an epidemic and the people of France having enough faith in their government to not panic.
Kelly
Here’s a map of global COVID-19 cases from Johns Hopkins.
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Barbara
@sdhays: This is a highly selective read of what happened. We don’t need to protect the CDC as it is. We need to make it clear that CDC leadership — political appointees — made bad decisions and then either lied about them or just pretended that the problem wasn’t that bad.
Wag
Make Trump own the failure. Its his job to own it.
sdhays
@Cheryl Rofer: Indiana Pi Bill
Martin
It is not a tough one to criticize. The US has so much capacity to get this right – further so many agents wanting to help them get this right. Every university with expertise in this, public health agencies in major states with experience with this stuff – CA, NY, MA. All they had to do was listen, and not be paralyzed by leadership. Act, and fuck if you piss off the boss.
It’s not that Trump is such a bad leader – it’s that the entire federal government is hostage to him. They are paralyzed. CDC and FDA are part of the same agency. There’s no excuse for lack of communication between them.
What’s also increasingly clear to me with this is that the people running government simply don’t know how it works, or what it’s limits are. I’m sure there are people screaming about why x wasn’t done not aware that they’re the ones with authority to do it. That happens all the time in organizations, and it’s usually the career professionals that know all of those details. But they need to be listened to and respected.
MomSense
Anyone else worrying about what happens if/when this hits the immigrant concentration camps?
Ksmiami
@Villago Delenda Est: Seconded. They are at a nadir- kick them in the fucking teeth.
Gravenstone
Since this is topic related, Cubs pitcher Yu Darvish went to a doctor yesterday because he had a cough and could not conclusively rule out Covid-19 exposure (Darvish is Japanese). They’re claiming that after testing, he does not have Covid-19. My question is, how can they know if testing is being tightly controlled by the CDC at present?
Ksmiami
@MomSense: Actually it’ll burn through elderly communities first so…
sdhays
@Barbara: I don’t think it’s a matter of protecting the CDC. The issue is that no one was driving this train. In a competent administration, issues at the CDC and the bottleneck at the FDA would have been detected and addressed immediately rather than simply letting the system run on autopilot off the cliff. Ultimately, that’s Dump’s fault, but I doubt he was well-served by his appointees either (which, of course, is his fault too since he chose them).
Dorothy A. Winsor
OT but this is a big deal. Hachette’s workers walked out over this book.
WhatsMyNym
@Gravenstone: Many states have taken over testing from the CDC and many more hospitals are cleared to offer the test.
In Other news – The organizers of Emerald City Comic Con, which was scheduled to be held on March 12-15, have announced that they will reschedule the event to summer 2020 amid COVID-19 concerns in Seattle.
L85NJGT
GOP state legislators will bear the political price.
Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Texas and Georgia should have moved on Medicaid expansion after 2018. Take the Democrats most potent line of attack off the table for 2020.
Dmbeaster
Hit the Trumpies hard. Blame them for it. Even if there was some CDC fault, who was overseeing their response? We knew this was serious in mid January when GOP Senators were writing to Trump asking about shutting down travel from China. (He got around to it a week later, after major airlines did it on their own).
At that point, someone in the Trump administration should have jumped on it. They let the test kit issue molder for weeks. Even if delay in that time period started with the CDC and bypassing the WHO test was a CDC screw up (and I dont know if it was), it does not matter. The governments of other major affected countries solved the problem while Trump was belittling the problem.
Think ATTACK and stop worrying about how perfect the attack is. And the “go high when they go low” has got to stop – it was one of Obama’s flaws that he stuck with that script way too often.
Martin
The response to Katrina is what took down Bush’s approvals. It took a bit of time for the public to fully digest how badly the administration response was going. The finger pointing, the promises that didn’t materialize, etc. The moment it crystalized with the public was palpable. Anderson Cooper not asking questions but pleading for the feds to act. Professional detachment gave way to personal outrage.
We’re not yet at that point, but we’re close, and we’ll hit it. Our ‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people’ moment is coming. The realization that the feds aren’t coming to help us and that the states will be overwhelmed just by filling in the federal role is going to create an entirely new phase to this.
Communicating with other universities, we’ve all reached that conclusion. We have to make all of these decisions locally, even in the states with really good state responses. They’re overwhelmed.
Dmbeaster
@Gravenstone: There is testing that can tell – its just an expensive and cumbersome lab process. The point of the test kits is that they are easy and specific for coronavirus. They are not the sole means for testing.
Martin
@MomSense: Jails/prisons. Homeless camps. They’re larger by population.
Gravenstone
@MomSense: We’ll never hear about it, until it’s decimated them. The media has largely moved on (unfortunately) so they will have to have some excuse to return their focus to the camps.
Brachiator
Trump loves anger and resentment, as does his supporters. His attacks are meant to keep his base agitated, not really to do real harm to his opponents.
But if folks want to ape Trump’s goons, I guess. But you got to keep focused on getting real shit done.
Martin
@Gravenstone: Most testing is now done by the states. CA and WA are running most of the tests. Feds still very few. My guess is his test went to WA.
Should also note, currently, 2 tests are needed per patient, so if they can do 1000 tests, that’s only 500 people. In Davids thread, the counts I gave for testing capacity is people.
Stanford has a new test that only requires one test per patient. Can also be done in less than a day. Only being used locally right now, but I think it will expand.
jl
I think need to accurately slam Trumpsters on what they’ve done wrong, which is a lot. Going back to cutting CDC funds for global infectious disease surveillance.
Don’t slam them for stuff that may not be their fault, and I think open question whether right decision was made or not, for example, CDC delay in getting test kits distributed.
Attack where justified, but make sure you have facts correct, and come correct, first, so you can stand by claims and respond to inevitable smears and lies from Trumpsters. Maybe need to call our our horrible failed corporate media experiment if they ‘bothsides’ it. Lives and our economy are at stake.
Lapassionara
Meanwhile, at the top of the blog, Delta is trying to sell me a round trip ticket to the U.K. with fares “starting as low as $321.”
one airline exec said that this feels like the days after 9/11.
We’ll be bailing out a lot of travel-related companies soon, I think.
Immanentize
@Kelly:. Thank you for the map link.
Hmmm. None reported in London? But many in North England.
Unbeveevabal.
Jay
@MomSense:
Prisons and jails, unhoused, Indigenous reserves,……….
Barbara
@Dmbeaster: Good comment. A competent administration that learns of a problem like this jumps in and addresses it. That didn’t happen, and that’s the real problem.
Immanentize
@Lapassionara: I hope we will bail them out, because I want my $$$ back from a Thursday cruise I will have to cancel.
I am going to see about the quality of my Congressional Rep.’s constituency services. (I have the excellent Katherine Clark)
jl
Suggestion for daily coronavirus update: more info on incident cases, less on total cumulative cases.
Martin
University of Washington just cancelled in-person classes. Everything moves online. Glad they didn’t wait any longer.
3 UCLA students currently being tested.
Cheryl Rofer
There’s more about Redfield here. If you want to go after problems in the CDC, target him.
joel hanes
Trump spent three years attacking the entire pandemic response apparatus: reduced funding for the CDC, the NIH, and USAMRIID, fired the entire pandemic response inter-agency team and did not fill those positions, put incompetent political apparatchiks over the scientists.
So if CDC didn’t do the right thing, I know who I’m blaming FIRST.
SECOND, go after those political apparatchiks: Verma and Azar are clearly still more concerned about covering Trump’s ample ass than about protecting the health of Americans. CDC is in DHS, and there is no Secretary — only the completely unqualified aparatchik Chad Wolf. Crucify him. Also, remember that in just three short years, Wolf is the fifth to occupy that office: Kelly, then Elaine Duke (acting), then the odious fascist Kirstjen Nielsen (children in cages), then McAleenan (acting, famous for big penis urinals), then finally the hapless Wolf. All should be investigated for their complicity in damaging the national security.
Then, if there’s any blame left over, Redfield as head of CDC has not covered himself with glory — but given the people he’s worked for and the vandalism that has passed for policy, it would have taken a hero willing to be fired to actually do the right thing.
opiejeanne
@Cheryl Rofer: And today these same people said there would be 4 million test kits available next week.
We had Redfield, Pence, and the execrable Seema Verma in Seattle yesterday, lying on tv last night about introducing new controls on infection in nursing homes. That’s just one lie, the number of tests that would be available this week was supposedly 1 million, and that’s another lie.
One comment that made me snicker was when they said they were cooperating with WA state. They really had no ability to force WA to follow the CDC guidelines, because WA stopped doing that several days ago. We’re using our own local lab at UW and tests developed there because we can do it faster here. And we haven’t been obeying the directive to limit testing to people who have been to China or other parts of Asia.
Another Scott
A good ad against Susan Collins.
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@Martin: Are you at UCLA?
I just wanted to thank you for your risk assessment posts yesterday. They were so helpful! And clear. Please keep more like than coming, it makes me sound smart when I have lunch with the provost?
Philbert
@Served: Then get him to Judiciary somehow, and Sen Harris inquire on a few things too.
Zzyzx
I forgot something at my desk at work so I broke the rules and went in for a second. I took a few photos that shows how empty Seattle/Bellevue is right now. If you know the area at all, you’ll be stunned.
sdhays
@jl: I don’t really understand the justification for not using the WHO test until the better CDC test was ready. Maybe there is one, but waiting seems like it was clearly the wrong choice, and should have been clear when the decision (or no decision) was made. It’s not like this was a surprise for the people who follow this stuff.
Immanentize
@opiejeanne:
Did she have more of her Ivanka special jewelry robbed while there?
Avalune
Friend of mine in the San Diego area is reporting that troops are being sent to borders over asylum seekers/coronavirus concerns. @momsense
Immanentize
@Avalune: Are you and that fellow of yours still coming to Beantown? If yes, I will be here and ready to entertain you.
Gravenstone
@Martin: They had (or claimed) results within one day. While it’s great that some states appear to able to support rapid response testing, it seems a bit of a stretch of still limited resources to be able to test a patient whose sole complaint was a cough. I’m now wondering whether there was pressure from MLB or the Cubs organization to prioritize this? Since Darvish is pretty high profile within the sport, and because of the potential financial ramifications of spring training and the early MLB season getting upended by a positive Covid-19 diagnosis of a player.
opiejeanne
@sdhays: In Pence’s news conference in Seattle yesterday, he kept promising us that we would be offered coronavirus.
I think there was a word missing from the end of that sentence, because I don’t know anyone clamoring to get coronavirus.
laura
What Villago Delenda Est said.
No fucking quarter!
gene108
@Lapassionara:
I’m a transplant recipient. I am right there with you in how much this bullshit response is putting my life in danger.
sdhays
@opiejeanne: Rick Santelli.
Aleta
Yutsano
@Avalune: @Immanentize: Meet-up or GTFO. Bonus points if you get Levenson out for it too.
Cameron
People need to hit the regime over this like berserkers on meth. One exception I would make is for Biden, since that would bugger his Kindly Old Uncle Joe With The Positive View Of The Future shtick.
Avalune
@Immanentize: Yes, we are still planning to be there barring some unforeseen crisis or quarantines or something. Does this mean your trip is off?
Gravenstone
@Zzyzx: Well, by your Twitter name, I now know you’re not the Zzyzx who was in my EQ guild and gaming group years ago. Wonder whatever happened to that one…
Aleta
@Aleta: wrong link. this one: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Stanford-University-coronavirus-test-COVID-19-15111328.php
Barbara
@opiejeanne: Pence’s statement on the availability of millions of tests is like the five year plans that Stalin and Chairman Mao kept crowing about with complete disregard to feasibility.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize:
So…no trip?
sdhays
@Cameron: Whatever you think of Biden, he has a pretty clear record of being strong on good government. He oversaw the Recovery Act without a dime unaccounted for. This shit costs lives, and that’s something that hits very close to his core being. I think he can channel some authentic anger as well as anyone else. He’s going to need to.
Martin
@Immanentize: No, but I’m talking to colleagues across the country. Vandy has a student confirmed with nCoV.
Nobody is telling universities what to do, we’re figuring this out as we go. There’s nothing from the feds. Nothing.
Italy is a very popular study abroad program, and those students are now all returning home because Italy told them to leave for their own benefit and because travel is likely to get shut down. So just about every university is getting a batch of Italy exchange students (China students just got absorbed in their quarantine – they moved so quickly). There’s no screening of these students returning by the feds, so we’re having to figure out how to do it locally. None of them are being tracked. We have no tests, mind you. Again, we’re making this up as we go.
We have students in South Korea and they asked to stay put. Safer there. Safer in China. Safer in Japan. Safer in UK, France, Germany.
Immanentize
I went to see my Doc yesterday for a follow up on my new High blood pressure diagnosis (who could have imagined that?)
It was a late afternoon appt., So it bumped up against my Doc’s 5 minute clinic times. (He is an awesome, groovy, jazz piano playing Doc running a totally progressive family practice).
Three of the five people who came in for the walk-in clinic while I was waiting were given masks as they had flu-like symptoms and were obviously worried…. Two of the three were college aged. I asked the receptionist who I’ve known for years — “Do you have Covid19 tests?” She snorted bitterly.
— I can’t wait for the mass migration that happens in this country when Spring Break starts at colleges across the country in a week.
Betty Cracker
It’ll be interesting to see how state departments of health fare under this stress test. From what I read in the local papers, it’s not going so well here in FL. Wouldn’t surprise me if red state tax-slashing sprees come home to roost.
ThresherK
I’m reminded of Kahn in King of the Hill, when he and Hank are in a cave and have no way up and out.
Hank goes “I told Dale we were coming down here, so if we don’t show up back home he’ll know what to do.”
Kahn replies “Oh boy! We’re trapped in a cave. Let’s wait for Dale Gribble to save us!”
Oh boy! Let’s wait for Mike Pence to save us!
Immanentize
@Martin: We have no confirmed cases and we have a pretty large (% wise) Chinese student population. Then again, as I said above, the Northeast doesn’t seem to have access to much if any testing capabilities.
Are you at a State institution? Mine is mid-size private and so far, the responses at both classes of schools is ad hoc.
I should add, we have a pretty extensive travel abroad program — actually required for undergrads at our business school — and it all has been cancelled. We have a Madrid campus (new hit spot) and we are staying open there urging students to stay but forgiving them if they return (it is mostly frosh)
joel hanes
@Yutsano:
I would choose GTFO.
It’s time for aggressive social distancing.
Of course, I live in Santa Clara County, which [checks notes] has about a fifth of the entire national total of confirmed cases, and for at least some of those, no infection path is known, which means that we have active social transmission.
We’re keeping to ourselves as much as possible and washing hands and doorknobs etc.
Martin
@Gravenstone: You need to, though. You need to test lots of people that don’t have nCoV. Your goal is a 1% positive rate or lower. How many nurses are quarantined because they have a cold and not nCoV, but don’t know for sure? We’re expanding self-quarantine because nobody knows anything. We’re having to shut things down because we can’t verify that these people are otherwise well.
2 weeks ago I had the flu (I think). Fever and cough. Did I have it? Maybe. Did I spread it? Maybe. Should people I interacted with quarantine? Dunno. Maybe.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: They don’t seem too concerned. https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2020/03/06/despite-coronavirus-crisis-florida-house-passes-193-million-tax-cut/
Immanentize
@Martin: And the really sad part is, we could know the answer to all those Q’s. At least we should be able to.
Hoodie
No reason to hold back because this shit has to get fixed now. What happened at the CDC was directly attributable to having an unstable, narcissistic coward at the head of the government. Agency heads afraid to do anything out of fear that they’ll be the object of a Twitter barrage, coupled with his slackass refusal to be responsible for anything. The asswipe signed that bill for 8 billion and acted like it was an accomplishment on his part, when he was asking for 2 billion and Congress had to force a bigger amount on him. Think how disengaged he will be in actually implementing that, and you can count on the fact that he will only get in the way. My dad told me that this kind of officer would get fragged in about a week because his fuckery would get guys killed. He fucks up the entire chain of command, which is really important in a situation like this.
Betty Cracker
@Cameron: Goddamn idiots. Of course they are.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: I think Mass. has responded well so far, but I heard the Governor speak about it and he was on edge and snippy. Governor Baker’s entire popularity is based on calm reassuring mewlings. Folks are rattled.
Orange Is The New White
@MomSense: In all honesty, no, because I’m far more concerned about what happens when my asthmatic wife gets it. And she will; she’s a public school teacher.
Ruckus
@Lapassionara:
I’m an old with neurological issues, which means my blood/brain barrier is most likely compromised – I am also at risk.
There are millions of us in the same boat. With a captain who has no idea why there is a pointy end and a flat end to the boat. Or how to row, when to shut up and work, what a port is for, or what a hurricane means to be in a row boat with only half an oar.
ziggy
@Zzyzx:
Wow, I-5 at 8:15 AM! I’m seriously trying to get my husband to go to Seattle this weekend. “the traffic will be excellent!”. I’d like to visit family, as well as patronize some of our favorite places, before things get any worse. I’m feeling pretty bad for all those small service businesses, but I’m not making much headway with him.
Immanentize
Further info.:
My Doc is on a bunch of boards and hospital councils and Harvard’s University experts panel, etc. He says that Harvard has no clear idea what to do. One side is saying this will be only slightly worse than flu, so, would you shut down Harvard for the flu? The other side is saying, look, we don’t know enough yet, the science is just trickling in — it could be the flu or it could be devastating, does Harvard want to risk putting everyone of it’s students in danger?
This is making decision-makers freeze up. Which is a decision.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: I’ll give you a baseline to work from – California runs 34 public health laboratories in the state. We have contracts with almost 1000 more labs with various levels of capability.
I believe that as of today, all 34 labs can run nCoV tests, and maybe half a dozen of the contracted ones (Stanford, UCSF, etc.)
Immanentize
@Ruckus: Trump’s boat is named
“Boaty McWeAreSoFuckedFace”
Travels with Charley
@joel hanes: nope CDC is in DHHS.
Zzyzx
@ziggy: I made a point of buying some food from one of the restaurants in our building lobby even though I wasn’t hungry. I was the only person in it.
JPL
The president is in town to tour the CDC and I just hope those stuck in traffic remember this when they vote in November. We only have three cases that we know of in GA, two of which probably live within a few miles of me.
Martin
@sdhays: I don’t either. As a member of the WHO, we should have certified that test immediately, deployed it, and then set to work on improving it in parallel.
Colossal fuck-up.
Another Scott
@Kelly: Excellent. Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@Martin: That same testing access has not yet been spun up here, even though we have labs out the wazoo!
Public and private. Shit, I am sure Draper has a whole lab rededicated to the military side of the issue. Lincoln labs too.
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
I agree with this. trump and his buddies are all about profit, not how you get it, what you do with it, only how much and who gets it. The epitome of the ME generation.
Brachiator
@Cameron:
What could possibly go wrong?
Well …
It’s wild to see these government officials doubling down on stupidity.
joel hanes
@ziggy:
I’m seriously trying to get my husband to go to Seattle this weekend. “the traffic will be excellent!”. I’d like to visit family, as well as patronize some of our favorite places, before things get any worse
Then you’re part of the problem.
And that’s the nicest thing I can say.
Martin
@Immanentize: Yes, large state public. We run the only public hospital in a county of 3.5M, so a lot of our institutional bandwidth is dedicated to that (understandably). That’s leaving my side of the world to fend for ourselves.
The state isn’t unhelpful, but they clearly have bigger fires to put out at the moment given they’re either fighting with the feds, or doing the feds job.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
It’s always tough to find out how little someone knows.
In the case of the VP though it’s pretty easy, he worked hard and proved that he earned the nickname dense.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cheryl Rofer: Bottom line here is that Donald’s outside advisors are telling him what they think he wants to hear. The CDC doesn’t do that shit. They report based on fact.
Donald doesn’t want to deal with fact. Fact is not his friend. It is his mortal enemy.
Martin
@Immanentize: We have lots of labs ready to go. Almost no tests.
Washington is way ahead of everyone in terms of having tests in the field.
Take note of whether the case numbers going up are because people are catching it, or that’s just where tests are available. I suspect it’s the latter.
joel hanes
@Travels with Charley:
Thanks for the correction. I read the CDC web site too fast.
So it’s Azar.
I regret the error.
Immanentize
@Avalune: Trip will be off. Just got the advice from Doc Onc.
Watergirl will be thrilled.
JPL
@Hoodie: Yup.
JPL
@Immanentize: Me too! Great idea about calling your representative and I hope her office can help.
ballerat
@Cheryl Rofer: Does it matter if the technical side remains functional and non-partisan if Trump has the decision-makers, i.e., the leadership, deferring to him? The net result is the same. Trump has successfully politicized the CDC.
The CDC will rapidly lose its credibility and thus ability to protect us in future outbreaks. It cannot effectively function as a center for controlling any disease outbreak if enough people begin to think they’re not being anything less than forthright. And it seems to me they’re not.
We are already turning to state-level organizations for leadership and help.
ziggy
@joel hanes: Seriously?! –We’re not ill, we are very healthy, we practice good hygiene. How is going into a coffee shop and visiting my family (perhaps for last time for a while!) putting people at risk? Are you really saying that Seattle needs to be quarantined now?
Ruckus
A sports banquet I attend every year has moved the date from April to November because of the virus. Mostly old farts attend, every year we find more and more gone. Probably a very good idea to reschedule.
Immanentize
@Martin: I don’t expect people will think cases are going up. There is already an effort to explain that we may well find cases when testing starts.
It feels so wrong in that it could have been so much better handled. That’s going to be the tragic after-action story.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: Froomkin is very good. He doesn’t pull his punches. He should get far more visibility than he does.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Immanentize:
You could read the name on there after it sank to the bottom of the Marianas Trench? I’m impressed!
Cameron
@Brachiator: I have to say I’m impressed. I’m not a native Floridian, and it’s surprising that in a state with such a variety of people (I hear at least half a dozen different languages in my Olds development out in Strip Mall Land) the state legislature seems to side 100% with ideology, venality, or an ideology of venality against reality. Not against liberalism, though I’m sure they hate it – against reality itself. If it weren’t incredibly destructive and bugfuck insane, I’d find it really fascinating.
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize:
Oh, good, you decided not to go – sorry about the wasted $$, but I was worried about you and the Immp.
jl
@sdhays: There were controversies over use of earlier tests. Tests that produce what look like OK false negative rates in high prevalence situations (in midst of bad epidemic, or in clinic) may be useless for surveillance in low prevalence settings.
There is also a mystery about people who seemed to have recovered testing positive again. Clinicians I’ve talked with say that this is very implausible given what we know about how human immune system responds to viral infection, and how fast RNA viruses can mutate.That suggests possibility of glitch in existing tests that produces false positives in some situations.
I’m not saying that what CDC did was OK, in fact the more I learn about it, I am suspicious. Why didn’t they used existing tests, but only in situations that proved them useful in China? I’m just saying that mistake to make definitive judgment at this time.
I also find it hard to believe that the Trumpsters would have any clue about anything about testing, so why would they try to interfere? Unless they had a ‘better not to know anything at all so stock market doesn’t worry’ approach. So it is a possibility with people that ignorant and stupid.
Ruckus
@Hoodie:
This. I had a captain like this. Actually had a couple. Also a lifer enlisted jackass or two. Fortunately no one was shooting at us. And as fortunately there were and are a lot of people far better. But when the top rung of the ladder is trump there is a tremendous amount of shit flowing downhill and it hits everyone.
sdhays
@jl: The latest explanation I’ve seen for recovered people testing positive again is there being 2 different strains.
jl
@sdhays: Yes, that is true. A test that produced unacceptably high false negatives and false positives in some situations may well be useless for surveillance in low prevalence environment.
I think will be interesting to see whether problems in Iran, Korea, Japan and Italy may be due to over reliance on tests that had flaws.
The fog of real time emergency response in epidemics can be very thick, at least for a lot longer than we’d like.
joel hanes
@ziggy:
It’s wildly infectious. Primary transmission is via aerial droplets.
Asymptomatic people absolutely can infect you.
King County is known for certain to have ongoing social transmission. This is why Microsoft has told all its people to work from home.
Restaurant and coffee shop employees mostly don’t have paid sick leave, and will be fired for too much absenteeism, so they live in a culture in which everyone goes to work sick.
How can you not know these things ?
chris
@Cheryl Rofer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration
Jay
@Martin
Is that what the kids are calling it these days, ?
Immanentize
@Ruckus: I used a well built high tech Democratic sea drone
opiejeanne
@Immanentize: Not in the local news yet, but maybe.
That was really a stupid stunt on her part. Who takes stuff like that with them to a conference??
joel hanes
@opiejeanne:
Who takes stuff like that with them to a conference??
The conspicuously privileged.
A Veblen good has little value if others are not aware that you own it.
ziggy
@joel hanes: Well you may be right in that the better decision is to stay out of King County. My husband certainly won’t entertain the idea. But I think at this point it is a bit paranoid. Certainly if there was a general request from the state to stay out of King County I would honor that. The economic implications of everyone making such decisions is going to be brutal.
joel hanes
@ziggy:
We are in a period of exponential growth of cases, and we have no idea how many actual infectious people there are in King County because we haven’t had the capacity to test even a fraction of the potential cases.
The public health implication of people feeling because “we’re healthy” they can go about their business and thus carry the virus out of the infection centers to everywhere else in the nation is tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths in the next twelve months. You may not be at risk of serious illness, but the asthmatic mother of the neighbor who gets it from you after you go home and talk about how empty Seattle was will fucking die. So will some of the other old people already in the hospital to which she was taken when she finally felt so sick she went in for treatment. So will one other old lady in her bridge club, who had a heart condition. So will maybe 5% of the old people with health conditions further down the chain of infection.
China got ahead of it by doing complete city lockdowns. They were right, but authoritarian. In the US, we rely on people to be smart enough to do the right thing.
ballerat
Regarding the OP, I hope you weren’t trolling with this question. Because if not that’s what I hate about Dems. Wishy-washy. Stereotypical. Stop with the stereotypes. You need to debate this?
Of course Dems criticize the CDC. They screwed up. They are still screwing up.
Every day they refuse to be candid and upfront with the people in this country, they lose credibility. Every day that Dems ignores the CDC’s mistakes they diminish their own credibility. The CDC is rapidly transforming into an integrity wraith, but that’s no reason the Dems should give up their own credibility.
Dems must criticize the CDC’s mistakes because if for nothing else it is the right thing to do.
And then we should look to state-level organizations that can actually lead, tell us what we need to know and help us do what needs to be done.
J R in WV
@rp:
A good point,but I would make a change, like this: