But the WHO did recommend the Berlin tests, as it had no false positives, and was quickly able to isolate the virus from other coronaviruses, something the initial CDC test was not able to.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/16/joe-biden/...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6988269/

This was published on January 23, and it contains all the information you need to establish this kind of test in your own lab. And while I'm not an expert in this area, the controls done to ensure avoiding false positives based on other viruses seem pretty thorough to me. And this validation is the part that I would suspect to be one of the more time-consuming and important aspects.

It's not going to improve performance in the next pandemic if people are afraid of doing their job or engages in ass covering.

Things generally don't improve because people get better. Things generally improve because bad people/groups/corporations/ideas fail.

Way more people should be fired / tried / impeached. Need I remind you that nobody went to jail over 2008? It does make the system more healthy. If you're responsible for the health of some country you better be scared, because the consequences are dire, and your decisions are of utmost importance. I want that person to be on constant lookout for problems, bordering on desperation.

Skin in the game is an easy concept we're all familiar with, but it generally leads to adverse behavior like gaming the numbers instead of fixing the problems.

See, e.g. http://www.hazardcontrol.com/factsheets/principles/core-prin...

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"Herein, the term “unsafe condition” is retained, but the term “unsafe act” is rejected as historically leading to error or incomplete cause analysis.

Rather, inappropriate human actions or inactions of persons that contribute to accidents (resulting from error or human nature associated with the common relevant human factor capabilities and limitations of men and women) are called “unsafe actions,” defined as unsafe system use methods and procedures, without any initial implication of fault or blame."

If you can game the numbers there's no real skin in the game. And people do! Just sell volatility ("everything will always be fine") regardless of the conditions, it will work wonders, until you blow up. The difference is that if you blow up your own money you cannot continue the game, whereas if you blow other people's money - you can.

As long as anyone is capable of gaming their numbers, it floods out honest people in favor of cheaters. It's very powerful at selecting for whatever your metrics are. When you have the wrong metrics or ones that can be cheated, it's very powerful in an extremely bad way.

In addition, the general public and the media are absolutely not good at this, or we would have far better leaders than we do.

The fact is that the public are terrible bosses. We look for people to blame, we're inattentive and have no idea, generally, how to evaluate things on actual metrics. We have no idea which metrics are being gamed and the people who do are actively gaming the metrics and flooding us with cherry-picked information as well as disinformation, though the former is probably more dangerous and more widespread.

The average person in the public will be satisfied as long as we blame some random politician instead of looking for structural reform. E.G. maybe we should adopt Japan's culture of using masks in public when sick, require employers to guarantee minimum standards of sick leave, and change various hospital/ER waiting room practices.

Things improve when we endeavor to make things better and test our ideas and willingness to learn from mistakes, especially so if we prioritize pandemic preparation.

Punishing people for their mistakes lead to people hiding their mistakes, not trying their damn hardest not to make a mistake, especially since mistakes are probably inevitable in a complex and evolving situation like a potential pandemic.

First, this is simply false.

Second, can you name anyone who should have gone to jail and state the law they broke?

Congress had eliminated a lot of regulations that could have prevented or tempered the meltdown. There were not really laws to break. And the population happily kept electing said people.

The electorate had skin in the game. And they did not learn.

Skin in the game is not that effective.

You get to save people first, and save face later.

As late as January 14, 2020 the WHO tweeted that there is NO evidence of human to human transmission of covid-19

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20

Sounds like these were preliminary results, which would have been well rectified by February. Wuhan was under quarantine Jan 23.

There is a substantial difference in being wrong a month or so after a new virus is discovered, and being wrong after a country has been shutdown for nearly a month.

EDIT: Updated for correct date Jan 23, not Jan 29, of Wuhan shutdown.

WHO appears to have been fairly well in front of this pandemic as soon as the evidence began to support it. The White House was in full denial/hoax mode until the end of February.