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pat_k

(9,313 posts)
1. Good history of the CDC and FDA failures...
Sun Mar 8, 2020, 02:51 AM
Mar 2020
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/06/coronavirus-testing-failure-123166

Why the United States declined to use the WHO test, even temporarily as a bridge until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could produce its own test, remains a perplexing question and the key to the Trump administration’s failure to provide enough tests to identify the coronavirus infections before they could be passed on, according to POLITICO interviews with dozens of viral-disease experts, former officials and some officials within the administration’s health agencies.


I haven't seen anything identifying specific failures in process and the people directly involved, but I would love to see someone like Jane Mayer dig into questions like the following. Or better yet, a congressional inquiry. I want to see the paper trail (emails, memos, meeting notes).

Why did the CDC decide they needed to come up with "their own" test rather than use the reliable test already developed? (An effort that took an additional 3 weeks.) What process/reasoning, went into this disastrous decision?

Why didn't the FDA immediately trigger a regulatory workaround enabling qualified medical centers to roll out tests that they had designed themselves?

What failures in process allowed the CDC test "performance issues" to go undetected until AFTER they began distributing their test around Feb 3? (Problems identified by recipients, NOT the CDC.)

Why did most states have to continue to send their samples to CDC for an additional 4 weeks (through March 2), causing a "bottleneck"?

And why is it only in the last couple days that they appear to have acted with any sense of urgency as they finally begin to "ramp up" testing capacity?

Whatever the specifics, the one constant is the absence of any sense of urgency fueled by Trump's lie, dismiss and downplay, deny and ignore, COVID-19 "strategy."

Time will tell how high a price this nation will pay for the loss of those critical weeks.

Yes. He must go, and every regulatory agency must be rebuilt. Purge the incompetent cronies put in place. Bring back the dedicated civil servants sidelined or removed. Rescind the destructive regulatory guidance designed to undermine, rather than implement, our laws.

The next president has an enormous task ahead -- cleaning up after trump's demolition crew. It's a lot harder to rebuild than to knock down.
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