
Reviving the US CDC - KKKKkkkk1
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31140-5/fulltext
======
nn3
After all the bungling they did on Corona they should rather be happy if they
survive as a organization. You had one job ... and everything. Clearly some
major reforms are needed.

------
m0zg
> Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director
> of the CDC's Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC's COVID-19
> mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC
> that I can trust”. __This is an unhelpful statement, __

Why is pointing out abject incompetence an "unhelpful statement"? First step
to solving any problem is acknowledging you have a problem.

Go to the CDC website yourself and try to understand the total mess they are
publishing, full four months after the epidemic started in earnest. They
should be the "gold standard" I agree. But they are not.

~~~
mcculley
This is not an accident. It’s the system working as designed. Steve Bannon
famously described his agenda as the “deconstruction of the administrative
state.” It’s pointless to argue about the chicken or the egg of how the CDC
became crippled. The administration does not want it to succeed.

~~~
m0zg
Does the _CDC itself_ want to succeed? People _without a budget_ have done a
much better job collecting and publishing data on github. Why is this so
insurmountable for the CDC? I'd ideally have a single source of information.
I'd prefer that source to be the CDC. But they somehow, 4 months in (!),
choose to publish a pile of steaming excrement instead of clean, curated, well
explained data.

~~~
mcculley
I'm not defending the CDC. I am astounded at how poorly cities and counties
record and report their own data and depend on the CDC. I want to see more
decentralized recording and reporting.

I have no idea how political things are at the CDC. Many there claim that they
have had their budgets cut below workable levels. That's entirely consistent
with the stated purpose of the current administration.

We should get used to not having anything useful at the federal level.

~~~
SrslyJosh
> We should get used to not having anything useful at the federal level.

Snow Crash, here we come.

