It was almost inexcusable in the first month--CDC was clearly planning for an outbreak on the order of thousands of people in total (tiny reserve of masks and ventilators, severely limited testing capacity, etc), but now it's been a month that South Korea has had drive through testing facilities and by all appearances our CDC still doesn't even know how many tests are performed per day much less how it's going to scale up testing so we can "reopen our economy".
A few weeks ago, IIRC, the CDC said that since the states were providing all the numbers, it wasn't going to bother doing any collation.
It strongly looks to me that the federal government has given up trying to help, being led by someone who is utterly incompetent to the task demanded of him. The response at this point is largely being driven by the 50 state governments + various territories + DC, with the president hoping to steal all the credit and avoid any blame whatsoever. And the rest of the federal government seems to be unwilling or unable to take charge of the response.
it has tests and tests per million as columns. Have no idea where the data comes from.
Oped on the matter: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-01/corona...
That said the US seems to be doing even worse in terms of testing and unfortunately has a spokesman that constantly lies to the world.
Millions of people have been laid off or furloughed and cannot find other work because businesses in their industries have been forced to close indefinitely. Some of them may not have money left to feed their children. They definitely would go back to work if they could.
People were going to bars and restaurants in NYC and the Bay Area up until the lockdowns started. I think a lot of people would start living relatively normally again -- health officials want the lockdowns extended because they know that.
The U.S. is not ramping up a slew of mask production lines, unlike, say, Singapore.
We're not ramping up testing capacity to the point where we can have every person wearing a high-quality mask and getting tested to start contact-tracing regimes.
I wish the federal government stepped up here.
LOTS of people will, and we can reduce the risk with masks. Provide them to employees, require they wear them, maybe require customers wear them too.
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-workers-pandemic-risks-ow...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-warehouse-workers-staten...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/11/corona...
It might help people be more comfortable performing essential tasks in public, but as long as we're seeing thousands of deaths per week on the news, people by and large are going to stay home if they can.
Are we doing everything we can to ramp up production as fast as possible?
That's the free market.
Unfortunately, the CDC learned no such lesson and continued to operate as though no widespread contagious disease could possibly break out on US soil, as they had virtually no stockpile of masks nor even plans to secure the mask supply chain, etc (not to mention their testing strategy only scaled to hundreds of cases per day). I suppose that's the unitary state.
Of course, the CDC should have a serious reserve of masks (and other general equipment for the most likely outbreaks) and plans to secure the supply chain, including partnering with private industry to make sure they can operate at an increased capacity in case of emergency. There's no fundamental reason that our federal agencies have to be incompetent with respect to their fundamental purpose.
1. Masks were dirt cheap and certainly useful for any serious epidemic or bioterrorism event or just about any other emergency scenario for which the CDC would be called upon (our reserves were in the tens of thousands, but those masks sell for cents apiece—could have had a million masks for ~$500K)
2. The CDC didn’t even have plans to secure the supply chain, and plans are damn near free
3. The CDC was budget constrained but went and developed its own test instead of using the WHO test?
EDIT: Updated math figure
Something is seriously off with your math.
Thanks for the correction.
Let's all just keep using rubber band party hat masks while the intelligent among us sport the P100 eliteness. /s
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/factsheet...
Remind me again how many flu deaths we had this season?
https://i.redd.it/u3fx3aw1n6s41.jpg
That's with a complete lockdown. What do you think that chart would look like if people were just 'left alone to get a bad cough'?
quite similar if it's as contagious as we're told.
Coronavirus: 1400-2000 deaths per day now, 23,000 total so far, still climbing.[2]
USA #1 in coronavirus deaths! [1]
[1] https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-death...
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-I...
Me. I will risk myself. And most of my friends, too.
Who's going to want to risk themselves or their employees if we can't ensure our own safety? Don't get me wrong, it's great that we're seeing signs of the curve flattening. But we're still bungling the Covid response on a daily basis by not making testing easier and more accessible.