
The CDC lost control of the coronavirus pandemic, then the agency disappeared - SirLJ
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/cdc-coronavirus-containment-redfield
======
vikramkr
Over the past few years a series of American agencies have lost their
reputation and world standing. The FAA with the 737 max, the CDC with the
test, the FDA with testing regulation and hydroxychloroquine. Its important to
have institutions that work, but we've spent years deliberately gutting them
and undervaluing them. All that money spent on the military and homeland
security, and in the end we were caught utterly unprepared for the greatest
national security threat of the past few decades. Even though we have more
aircraft carriers than makes sense to have, we'd rather build another one than
invest in crucial infrastructure such as strong regulatory agencies and
science infrastructure. And we get to pay the price of those misplaced
priorities as we barrel towards 200,000 dead. Hopefully this serves as a sort
of wakeup call.

~~~
icegreentea2
I think you'd make a stronger argument by instead of making a military or
other things argument, and just make a 'fund other things more' argument.

The reason I think you should stay away from pointing fingers, especially at a
relatively divisive issue like military or especially aircraft carrier funding
is because then you shift a question of "should American be world leading in
commercial air travel regulation, pandemic prevention and control, and medical
development" to a far more complex one of what America's role in the world
should be.

The combined CDC, FDA and FAA budget is something like 35 billion dollars a
year. Overall DOD budget is is nearly 700 billion, making up nearly half of
annual discretionary spending (roughly 1.5 trillion). You could literally
double the funding of those three agencies and barely budge the overall
calculus of the budget.

Edit/Add-on: I think the whole sub-thread under my comment (my bad =/ \- I get
the irony...) is an example of the types of distractions that might be
avoidable if you don't scope military spending into discussions.

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
The fact that "military" is a "divisive" issue proves the point of how we got
to this point in the first place.

~~~
ethanbond
People are divided on what the US military‘s role in the world should be and
how much money it should take to uphold that role.

Sitting atop the longest stretch of global stability (largely
enforced/maintained by the US military), it’s very hard to think clearly about
what variables we can or should fiddle with.

~~~
bjlorenzen
The globe might feel stable while sitting inside the US and reading domestic
media sources, but it sure hasn’t been easy for the dozens of countries we’ve
been invading/occupying for the past decades.

~~~
Covzire
If we're making sweeping generalizations, then countries with stable
benevolent governments who don't threaten their neighbors / the US and fund
terrorism don't get invaded or occupied either. To be clear, I'm not saying
every foreign policy action the US has undertaken in the last few decades has
been superb.

~~~
pinkfoot
If we're making sweeping generalizations, then countries that don't project
military power to prop up dodgy regimes and enforce their currency on major
commodities don't get targetted by terrorist action. To be clear, I'm not
saying every action that resistance organisations and foreign governments have
taken in the last few decades has been superb.

:) :)

------
ed-209
"Believing people without symptoms didn't spread the virus, the agency limited
testing, discouraged masking..."

This is false by Fauci's own account (see below interview) in which he states
mask wearing was discouraged in order to secure availability for health
workers. This is no small distinction as it raises questions about the
importance of public trust/credibility during a health crisis.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0XHC5Kxxv_w](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0XHC5Kxxv_w)

~~~
ReticentVole
There are a minimal number of excess deaths now associated with COVID, so what
is the problem? Allowing the community to acquire immunity naturally during
Summer is a good way to minimise the spread of the virus come Winter. COVID
severity seems heavily linked with Vitamin D levels, so lockdown during Summer
would possibly have been counter-productive for the general population.

[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm)

Why should Governments force people into lockdown for a virus with a CFR of
0.26%, marginally more deadly than the Flu at 0.1%? In particular, COVID
deaths are concentrated at those aged 70+ with existing health conditions, so
broad-scale lockdown and enforced mask wearing doesn't make sense - when
targeted support for the elderly and vulnerable would be effective and less
disruptive.

~~~
tsimionescu
> There are a minimal number of excess deaths now associated with COVID, so
> what is the problem?

I don't usually use such language on HN, but this is absolutely delusional.
Covid19 has killed more people in 6 months, with lockdowns, than Malaria did
all of last year. More than a third of those deaths are in the US.

How can you possibly in good conscience claim this is even remotely comparable
to the Flu?

~~~
nate_meurer
You're using ambiguous language, and you didn't at all refute the parent's
argument.

If sars-cov-2 actually turns out to have overall IFR of around a quarter of a
percent, then it most certainly is comparable to seasonal flu. I personally
think that's unlikely, as most reputable estimates have continued to converge
on the 0.5-1% range. But even that is "comparable" in the true sense of the
word, in that reasonable and fruitful comparisons can be made between the two.
Which is exactly what epidemiologists do for a living.

I rather think it's _your_ comparison that's delusional. Two-thirds of of the
people killed by malaria are children. Millions more children are afflicted
with symptoms severe enough to lead to long-term health problems. Malaria
literally robs countries of their future. And malaria's transmission is a much
harder problem to solve, because we're fighting a resilient, ubiquitous,
nearly invisible vector that can spread the disease miles from the nearest
infected person.

To be sure sars-cov-2 is worser and scarier than seasonal flu in every way,
but the hysteria isn't helpful.

You didn't even bother to try to refute the parent's assertion that more
limited but better targeted restriction might work just as well with less
economic damage. This is an area of active, legitimate debate.

~~~
tsimionescu
The IFR for Covid-19 is still not known, but just based on deaths, it is
obviously either much more virulent or much more deadly than a seasonal flu.
There is no way to look at ~127k deaths in the US for half a year, with no
sign of slowing down in summer, and say that it is similar to the flu (which
killed ~34k people last year in the US).

The comparison to malaria is also interesting. You're absolutely right that
the infection vector is completely different in almost all characteristics.
The difference between a disease killing mostly children and a disease killing
mostly old people is important, but I don't think "robbing a country of its
future" is a meaningful way to look at it. For example, there are no
demographic risks from malaria, like your metaphor would seem to imply. The
majority of the economic impact is coming either from households having to pay
for the care of their sick family, or from lost work due to the sickness. The
long-term impairments that malaria may leave children with are also a factor.

Of these, the first and possibly the third apply to COVID-19 as well, except
that the costs for COVID-19 care are much higher, and with the important
caveat that we don't know the long-term impacts of COVID-19 (though it is very
likely not to affect children significantly, fortunately).

And while malaria can be eradicated (with great effort and time), as has been
done in the southern US and southern Europe at least, it remains much more
likely that COVID-19 will remain an endemic burden that we will just live and
die with. I don't think we have any examples of successfully eliminating a
human-to-human transmitted respiratory disease, unless we get lucky with a
vaccine. It may well end up as a new tuberculosis.

And the assertion that limited restrictions could work as well as lockdowns is
an extraordinary claim without any form of evidence. The only countries that
successfully stopped the disease used some combination of timely lockdowns,
travel restrictions, ubiquitous mask wearing, large scale testing, and
excellent universal healthcare. Limited protections for the elderly have not
been shown to work anywhere in the world, so why bother discussing them?

Note: in the spirit of nitpicking about my use of "not comparable" when I
meant "much worse than", I should also point out that SARS-CoV-2 is a virus,
so it is literally not comparable to the Flu, which is a disease. You can
compare SARS-CoV-2 with (one of) the Influenza virus(es), or compare COVID-19
with the Flu/Influenza.

~~~
nate_meurer
> _And the assertion that limited restrictions could work as well as lockdowns
> is an extraordinary claim without any form of evidence._

Japan, for example, has so far found success with very limited restrictions.
There are other examples.

> _The only countries that successfully stopped the disease used some
> combination of timely lockdowns, travel restrictions, ubiquitous mask
> wearing, large scale testing, and excellent universal healthcare._

This completely contradicts your previous sentence. Every intervention that
you listed except for "lockdown" is... not a lockdown, and therefore by
definition an alternative to a lockdown. Governments at all levels around the
world are exploring alternatives, which will largely be judged to "work as
well as lockdowns" if they can keep healthcare systems from being overwhelmed
while significantly avoiding the economic devastation caused by the stricter
interventions.

> _Limited protections for the elderly have not been shown to work anywhere in
> the world, so why bother discussing them?_

That's an extremely unhelpful way to approach any complicated subject,
especially one of such enormous importance. Thankfully, most healthcare
professionals don't indulge is such nonsense, and have in many places been
successful in keeping infections out of care homes. As of this weekend, there
are still nursing homes in the USA reporting zero deaths from COVID, and many
others that have kept infections to a level similar to that of other
respiratory diseases.

~~~
tsimionescu
I didn't contradict myself, I was referring to 'limited restrictions for the
elderly', the parent commenter's recommendation. The parent commenter was also
explicitly against widespread mask wearing, and for allowing the disease to
spread during summer. Japan has extremely widespread mask wearing, and while
lockdown orders were not enforced, there were recommendations for the populace
to work from home and avoid going out for the night which were respected on a
wide scale, paired with travel restrictions both internally and
internationally, and school closure in the cirtical period at the beginning of
spring.

Related to targeted measures for the elderly and their success, of course care
homes should take all precautions, who would oppose that?? I am saying that it
can't be considered enough, and we have seen that it is not enough, for
example in Sweden. The fact that there exist care homes in the US that have
had few or no COVID-19 deaths is proof of nothing, except of a job well done
by those people, and of good luck.

But the elderly don't live only in care homes, and it is not only the elderly
who are getting sick and dying. And many more care homes have done a terrible
job in keeping their wards safe, becoming hot beds of infection themselves.

> > Limited protections for the elderly have not been shown to work anywhere
> in the world, so why bother discussing them?

> That's an extremely unhelpful way to approach any complicated subject,
> especially one of such enormous importance. Thankfully, most healthcare
> professionals don't indulge is such nonsense

Limited restrictions <for the elderly> as the only measure taken against
COVID-19 have not worked anywhere in the world, are against almost all medical
professionals' recommendations, and aren't even worth discussing. It has been
tried by madmen, and it leads to tragedy. This is what the parent was
proposing, and this is what I am combating.

Less-than-lockdown restrictions for the entire populace can work, if they are
respected on a wide scale. Unfortunately, most of the people who are against
lockdowns are also against any such restrictions, imagining instead that they
can shift all of the burden on the elderly and sick. Not only is that a
heinous attitude, it has also been shown not to work.

------
chasing
At the moment we're well beyond the CDC. We have a President and his various
acolyte governors who have so utterly botched and politicized our COVID-19
response that many people won't take the most basic steps to protect
themselves and those around them. It's maddening and leaves those of us who
are trying to do the right thing feel totally unprotected and unsupported,
especially in states like Texas and Florida.

The CDC may have made missteps, but there's no way it can possibly operate as
well as it should in this political climate.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Of course there'll be politics on an issue of great social importance. That's
_supposed_ to be the point of having a CDC, that they can offer respected,
apolitical advice on what we need to do. When they fail catastrophically, we
inevitably fall back to the normal strategy for resolving disputes about what
our society should do, which is politics.

~~~
someguydave
Looking at the HN comments apparently nobody wants to believe that civil
servants can fail unless hindered by the political bosses, and that Presidents
are personally responsible for what 2.8 million federal employees do all day.

I wonder if they blame the Queen in the U.K.?

~~~
rsynnott
The queen isn't in charge of the civil service.

People in Britain absolutely do blame the cabinet (the UK's executive) and
particularly the prime minster when they fuck up, yes. I mean, obviously.

~~~
someguydave
You should watch “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” for reasons why you
shouldn’t believe the elected politicians have anything to do with what the UK
government actually does.

~~~
lumberingjack
Just watching the House of Commons debate finer points about covid-19 is
hilarious seems like they're more clueless than the public because they're
scared blind over losing their positions

------
mnm1
The CDC is an executive agency and therefore under the ultimate control of the
presidency. There is no way that this was not orchestrated from the top by an
ignorant president. This isn't stupidity. It's malice. Even if the CDC wanted
to do better, they can't. They can't provide messaging or testing or anything
against the wishes of the white house. Want to force everyone to wear masks?
Can't because it'll embarrass the president. What is the point of even having
such an institution when all of its actions can be overridden by a mad man
determined to only advance his selfish agenda, an agenda that clearly does not
include dealing with this virus in any way? The failure of the CDC has been
catastrophic, but there's no way things would have turned out this way had
they had free reign to implement proper policies based on science.

------
aazaa
> Frieden, the former CDC chief, argued that the agency failed largely because
> it has been shackled to an inept administration. “The overarching problem
> has been the failure to have a clear national strategy, a national plan, and
> consistent communication. Everything really stems from that,” he said.

That's a common refrain and the gist of the article. But it's helpful to zoom
out.

At the end of WWII, the US stood as the only intact industrial producer. It
parleyed this win into a decades-long economic/military/political advantage.
Through a collection of unsavory attitudes, the country began to think of
itself as different in some magical way. The reverence toward WWII as the last
"good" war has kept the focus on winning WWIII for over 70 years. The belief
that somehow we're special has made it impossible to look at actually solving
domestic problems or even act internationally.

This mix fed directly into a world view in which problems come from abroad.
You see it with The Wall and immigration policy. You see it with the focus on
foreign election interference. When there's a problem, its source more likely
than not falls outside US borders.

The marginalization we see with CDC can be found in a wide range of American
institutions: the military; the space program; regulatory agencies including
FDA, FAA, and EPA; the educational system; Congress; the White House; even
recently agriculture.

The failure of these institutions, combined with exceptionalism borne of a
military victory 75 years ago, has led to a broad abdication of
responsibility.

You can see this in how the US spends money. Consider the US Federal budget.
Over 85% of expenditures fall into three categories: benefits/entitlements;
military; and interest payments, in that order.

[https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-
bud...](https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-
budget-101/spending/)

This has been a bipartisan effort that predates 2016 by decades. The latest
incarnation is just one station on a very long railroad.

------
hourislate
Woulda,shoulda,coulda...

We live in a very different world today where someone can get on a plane and
spread a virus across the planet in a matter of days. The only hope in
containment was that the virus didn't spread easily.

The best solution that I can think of that may have stopped the spread of the
virus would've been giving everyone as many N95 masks as needed and make
wearing them mandatory. Unfortunately it was far easier to spend 5 trillion
$$$ on everything but that. These masks should have been free and available at
every street corner of the USA, Subways, Buses, Airports, Supermarkets, etc.

This isn't over and I don't know how it ends, but hopefully we'll come out the
other side a little smarter and more prepared for the next one.

~~~
mav3rick
The country still refuses to wear masks. Led behind a president who refuses to
wear masks. This is literally the minimum he could do.

------
nl
I did some work with the CDC in 2014. They were organised and sensible and
fantastic to work with, especially in comparison to local equivalents here in
Australia.

It's shocking to see how badly they failed.

~~~
o-__-o
Fun fact,CDC was not prepared in 2014.

FEMA appeared to have their shit together but completely boondoggled every
disaster response in some way.

It’s amazing we didn’t see this coming sooner

~~~
nl
The project I was on was on Dengue Fever and Zika and they had their shit
together on that. The data was clean, well organised, delivered quickly.

Somehow between then and now that data collection side has fallen to bits to
the point where efforts like the John Hopkins tracking project had to rely on
the NYT open source collection on GitHub.

I don't know who is responsible for pandemic response in the US, but back then
everyone at CDC seemed competent and dedicated.

------
fortran77
One of my pet peeves is the way nobody in the Government is caring about
safety on air travel.

I had to fly recently and someone near me was using a CPAP.

Study after study shows that CPAP aerosolizes and spreads virus particles much
more rapidly than normal respiration. Various Government agencies warn about
this.

\- [https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/wp-
content/uploads/sites/197...](https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/wp-
content/uploads/sites/197/2020/04/COVID-19-and-CPAP-Frequently-Asked-
Questions.pdf)

\-
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6832307/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6832307/)

\-
[https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/hcp/aero...](https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/hcp/aerosol.pdf)

\-
[https://em.umaryland.edu/educational_pearls/3741/](https://em.umaryland.edu/educational_pearls/3741/)

I've written (FedEx) to the CEOs of United and American. American didn't
answer. United says they're required by law to allow people to use CPAP in-
flight.

There's no excuse for this. A person who needs a CPAP is already a high-risk
for dying if they contract COVID. Do they want to take down everyone else with
them?

~~~
sokoloff
Americans with Disabilities Act may require the airlines to permit CPAP users
to travel with the machine. It’s a tough call, but I don’t think “CPAP users
are grounded indefinitely” is a fair and equitable position.

~~~
TomSwirly
Where did "indefinitely" come from? That's a rather big jump, isn't it?

It's the middle of a pandemic! Surely this is not the time to have a big germ-
spraying machine in the middle of an airplane?

CPAP users can wait until after the epidemic has stabilized to travel. I mean,
everyone should avoid travelling.

Given that the last two days in a row had record new cases and that three
states today already had record numbers by midday, I'm... disconcerted at the
lack of urgency that seems to be so common.

~~~
sokoloff
Given that it's the literal definition and common usage of “indefinitely”
(without fixed or specified limit, not precise or exact), I don't think it's a
big jump at all.

------
pgrote
The United States doesn't have effective federal pandemic laws. The federal
government looks to the states to manage their own health arenas and in those
states many allow county level health departments to run with the ball. This
is how you end up with one state doing x and another state next door doing y.
It even gets to the county level with a county in a state doing x and the
county next to it doing y during a pandemic. The CDC lost the battle before it
began.

It was heartening to see everyone sort of pull together to flatten the curve,
but with what has happened during the phased reopenings, you'll never have
American citizens do it again voluntarily.

------
oneplane
I wonder if that title is the best one to suit te reality. From an outsider it
would look like control was 'taken' from, or never 'given to' the CDC, rather
than lost.

------
cityofdelusion
The pandemic has done a great job of highlighting weaknesses inherit to
democratic governments. Populism and demagoguery, combined with rewarding
loyalty and punishing dissidents. A dysfunctional democratic republic isn’t
very different from an autocracy. I suspect during times like this it might
even weaker, since you end up with no national unity. You can’t deal with a
pandemic effectively in this kind of political environment.

------
b0sk
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?

~~~
ausbah
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/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/)

~~~
emmelaich
Obama cut it too. Until Ebola.

~~~
darkerside
Which was handled before it made its way to the US in any significant
capacity. Imagine Trump had taken clear and decisive action against COVID in
January.

~~~
emmelaich
Hindsight is easy.

> Imagine Trump had taken clear and decisive action against COVID in January

Like the travel ban, which he announced on Jan 31?

~~~
darkerside
Of course hindsight is easy. Does that mean we shouldn't make use of it?

And yes, like the travel ban, which clearly was the wrong solution for the
problem.

I don't blame the Trump administration for failing to predict the future, but
I do see that they willfully ignored bad news over and over again and in fact
continue to do so even today, which is completely unconscionable.

------
LatteLazy
The FDA, the CDC, WHO, our media and governments in the US and UK all need
massive systematic reform if not outright replacement.

------
mensetmanusman
This is my favorite chart:

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-
mill...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-
million?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~USA~SWZ~NOR~ITA~DEU~FIN~FRA~CAN)

~~~
pinkfoot
Best they rename Swaziland to its new name "eSwatini" before the woke find
out!

~~~
rsynnott
Being offended by completely speculative offence theoretically been taken by
ill-defined third parties is one of the Internet's weirder trends.

------
victorbstan
I haven’t seen any mention in the article about political interference.
Consider Trumps policies and you’ll see why all these organizations are
failing. He’s destroying them.

------
manicdee
Clearly it was the CDC at fault here, not a few hand picked bureaucrats, not
the chain of command, not a president with a penchant for firing people who
challenge his authority.

What a poorly concocted article. The least the author could do so remind
people of the “starve the beast” approach to public utilities that the
Republicans have been pursuing for decades.

Nope, we’ll just throw the entire CDC under a bus.

~~~
gipp
There's this strange phenomenon on HN sometimes -- or at least I've noticed it
here several times -- where people will somehow manage to condemn the article
while arguing for _exactly the thesis of the article_. That's what you're
doing here.

~~~
watwut
Given that a lot of people dont read articles and go straight to comments,
comments that challenge title are valuable if the title is at odds with
article content.

~~~
mschuetz
I literally can't read most articles due do adblock blocker or because they
block european visitors.

~~~
paulcole
Turn your adblocker off if you want to read those articles? If you don’t,
don’t.

~~~
mschuetz
adblockers are a non-negotiable necessity nowadays. not due to ads, but due to
tracking.

~~~
paulcole
OK, then you don’t get to read the article. It’s a fair trade.

~~~
mschuetz
That is fine, I just wanted to give another perspective why people only read
the title and not articles.

~~~
paulcole
That doesn’t give a perspective on why they feel compelled to comment though.
This is a discussion of the article not a guess-what-the-article-might’ve-said
contest.

~~~
mschuetz
Most articles end up being a discussion of only what the title says, and not
being able to read the articles is one of the reasons.

------
aalexxjjamess
Who trusted the CDC in the first place? The US healthcare system has been
compromised by rampant profiteering for a long time.

~~~
_jal
This is a bit like blaming fire fighters for your disagreements with your fire
insurance issuer.

They may indeed both suck, but blaming one for the failure of the other
doesn't make much sense.

------
olivermarks
I can't take Buzzfeed 'news reporters' very seriously given the recent debacle
with Zerohedge and subsequent plagiarism firing of Ryan Broderick.
[https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-reporter-who-
go...](https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-reporter-who-got-
zerohedge-banned-twitter-fired-plagiarism)

This CDC piece by Vergano & Hirji is more of an opinion and perception article
than 'news reporting. I worry that click bait sites like 'Buzzfeed'(ridiculous
name) are taken too seriously, especially when there is so much great well
researched and argued material online that is often dismissed as 'conspiracy
theories' etc etc

------
C19is20
The article started off convincingly "On January 17th...", but i gave up after
"....the world’s most trusted public health agency, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention,...".

If the sentence had've been "...the world’s most trusted public health agency,
[in The United States (well, maybe)]", I would have perhaps considered reading
more.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
Just wondering what you would nominate for the worlds most trusted public
health agency? Maybe the WHO?

------
ykevinator
I hope we do a serious review of the cdc when this is all over. For all the
money we give them, they totally failed to "control" the outbreak. It feels
like it's devolved into an academic institution and we have enough of those.

~~~
iagovar
IDK the US that well, but if you don't have coercitive power over politicians
what can you do. I'm aware that CDC has been criticized for other stuff as
well, but in the end they seem to not have that much power.

In my country (Spain) it has been a shitshow. Everyone who warned about the
upcoming situation was ridiculed and/or insulted in a coordinated effort
between government and media. Now the same people is being called _captain
after the fact_. It's pretty sad to see, and I've been subject to this myself
despite not being a public figure.

Everything has turned into a political shitshow. When you have medical
professionals in TV insisting that the government is right, and that this is
just a flu, when you have your lead epidemiologist in TV with absurd claims,
when you have your OSHA-spanish-equivalent in National Police fired for buying
masks (and the list goes on and on), then how can anyone trust _the
institutions_.

I mean, my regional government which is corrupt, and sometimes hilariously
inept has done a better job. What the *@^- man.

~~~
rootusrootus
> IDK the US that well

If I can offer a piece of advice in that direction, it is to remember that the
US is in fact a union of 50 states, and those states actually have a fair
amount of power. The federal government, as powerful as it appears to be,
really does lack authority in many areas. While they could absolutely have
done a 1000% better job leading the response to the coronavirus, it was always
going to fall mostly on the states to do the actual heavy lifting. It's the
nature of our political system.

~~~
TomSwirly
And yet America managed two world wars just fine.

Speaking from the Netherlands, it seems clear that about 40% of Americans lost
their marbles in this grand collective paranoid fantasy starting around Nixon,
growing through Reagan, and then really taking off around the end of the W.
Bush administration.

They started to believe these terrible and terribly false things about their
fellow citizens, about science, about pretty well everything.

And they purchase hundreds of millions of weapons.

I can't see how it will possibly end well.

~~~
rootusrootus
> And yet America managed two world wars just fine.

Sure, defense is one of those things that is definitely the purview of the
federal government.

But for many things that the feds haven't managed to figure out how to control
yet, the tenth amendment is very much in play. For pandemic response this is
definitely true. It was true in 1918, remains true today. The states are in
charge.

Given recent history (in particular, as it relates to your 40%), I expect that
the states may actually start asserting more authority, instead of continuing
to cede it bit-by-bit to the federal government. Which perhaps does lead to
your final comment ;-).

