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0 pointsReedx6y ago0 comments

Pretty much. We're seeing the result of institutional decay at every level.

"In the middle of the 20th century, a cadre of credentialed experts was created to replace citizens. This was a mistake. The selection mechanism for entry into this cadre selects against bravery and original thinking. Experts should be consulted, but what use is an expert unwilling to consult on a grand vision? The American system of the 2020s through the city, county, state, and up to the federal level has been staffed with people who know how to speak and make themselves appear blameless, but not how to act."

https://americanmind.org/features/the-coronacrisis-and-our-f...

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pm906y ago

A few counterpoints:

- The CDC (and the US Federal Government in particular) has been understaffed and underfunded for the entire duration of the Trump Administration; to expect the agency that's been gutted for 3 years to rise up to responding effectively to a pandemic seems a bit much. The CDC is not the Center for Pandemic Control; 99% of the time their goal is to optimize tests and 99% of diseases they work with are not pandemics.

- Understanding that the responses to the pandemic by federal agencies would be suboptimal, the pandemic response team was created for this very scenario to provide an "optimal" response to a pandemic. But that too was disbanded by the current administration.

Removing all the ways in which an agency is empowered to tackle a specific problem and then claiming its institutional decay doesn't sound reasonable to me. Federal agencies are hyper-specialized things and deliberately don't have the kind of "leadership" that you're looking for... that power is held by the President, as it should be. Literally any other competent president would have (re-)created the task force and empowered that to lead the response.

MR4D6y ago

Per your first point, you are incorrect. From the CDC About page:

* CDC is the nation’s health protection agency, working 24/7 to protect America from health and safety threats, both foreign and domestic. CDC increases the health security of our nation.*

“Protection” is active, not passive. So yes, they are the center for pandemic control.

And if you don’t like my wording, then check out this page [0] which is the homepage for the Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases (DDID). On that page it states that “he directed CDC’s 2009 H1N1 Pandemic Vaccine Task Force”.

Finally, this funding story has been denied [1] by the CDC itself.

So yes, someone dropped the ball. I’m not mad about that (it’s a complicated environment, etc), as much as I am mad that nobody will own up to it. That lack of responsibility is why I hate politics and Washington crap in general.

[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/about/leadership/leaders/oid.html [1] - https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/false-claim-about-cdcs-glo...

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