[Genuine Realist]

Were there any problems with the CDC Ebola RT-PCR test?  This narrative doesn't raise any issues (though it is from the CDC website):

https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/20...index.html

Overall, eleven people were treated for Ebola in the United States during the 2014-2016 epidemic. On September 30, 2014, CDC confirmed the first travel-associated case of EVD diagnosed in the United States in a man who traveled from West Africa to Dallas, Texas. The patient (the index case) died on October 8, 2014. Two healthcare workers who cared for him in Dallas tested positive for EVD. Both recovered.

On October 23, 2014, a medical aid worker who had volunteered in Guinea was hospitalized in New York City with suspected EVD. The diagnosis was confirmed by the CDC the next day. The patient recovered.

For the original SARS virus, it was the CDC that announced the sequence: https://www.cdc.gov/sars/lab/sequence.html (after it was found to be a new coronavirus on the basis of Joe DeRisis' viral chip).

The CDC seems to have developed a MERS test without a problem:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/lab...sting.html


[*]

Most state laboratories in the United States are approved to test for MERS-CoV by using an rRT-PCR assay developed by CDC. This test is done under authority of an Emergency Use Authorization because there are no FDA-cleared/approved tests available for this purpose in the United States.

As best I can tell, the problems with testing were unique to SARS-CoV-2, and don't seem to be reflective of a systematic problem developing molecular tests at CDC.

BC

EDIT: Note, this post was in response to Goose's now-deleted post, suggesting that the CDC in prior administrations had trouble developing PCR tests.

Has anyone - anywhere in the world - developed a satisfactory test? Is this a CDC problem or reflective of the difficulties the virus presents?

---

I was just about to post the same thing.  Excellent article definitely worth a read.

Also, regardless of the timing, China didn't force Trump to put the wrong people in charge of the federal response.

It was to points like this I wrote the the 'Timelines' post. If there were a catalog of nations that responded quickly and effectively to C-19, this would be a cogent point.

But there isn't. Just on a quick scan, the health ministers of France, Germany, Israel, Romania, Tunisia and so on have all resigned. The reactions of just about every nation in the West were inadequate and identical. I know Trump opponents want to characterize the US as uniquely flawed, but it just isn't so.

A comment of the same sort applies to the New Yorker article. One paragraph leads off with the assertion that Washington State has less than 2% of the C-19 cases in the nation. No problem with that, but I wondered what the population of the State of Washington is. Turns out it's just over 7,000,000 - or, in a nation of 330,000,000, just over two percent. So the statistic is not all that significant, all by itself, which makes you wonder why it leads a topic paragraph, and how many more of the claims may be non-contextualized. All I know for sure is that the authors don;t like DiBlasio very much.

[Genuine Realist]

Were there any problems with the CDC Ebola RT-PCR test?  This narrative doesn't raise any issues (though it is from the CDC website):

https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/20...index.html

Overall, eleven people were treated for Ebola in the United States during the 2014-2016 epidemic. On September 30, 2014, CDC confirmed the first travel-associated case of EVD diagnosed in the United States in a man who traveled from West Africa to Dallas, Texas. The patient (the index case) died on October 8, 2014. Two healthcare workers who cared for him in Dallas tested positive for EVD. Both recovered.

On October 23, 2014, a medical aid worker who had volunteered in Guinea was hospitalized in New York City with suspected EVD. The diagnosis was confirmed by the CDC the next day. The patient recovered.

For the original SARS virus, it was the CDC that announced the sequence: https://www.cdc.gov/sars/lab/sequence.html (after it was found to be a new coronavirus on the basis of Joe DeRisis' viral chip).

The CDC seems to have developed a MERS test without a problem:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/lab...sting.html


[*]

Most state laboratories in the United States are approved to test for MERS-CoV by using an rRT-PCR assay developed by CDC. This test is done under authority of an Emergency Use Authorization because there are no FDA-cleared/approved tests available for this purpose in the United States.

As best I can tell, the problems with testing were unique to SARS-CoV-2, and don't seem to be reflective of a systematic problem developing molecular tests at CDC.

BC

EDIT: Note, this post was in response to Goose's now-deleted post, suggesting that the CDC in prior administrations had trouble developing PCR tests.

Has anyone - anywhere in the world - developed a satisfactory test? Is this a CDC problem or reflective of the difficulties the virus presents?

---

I was just about to post the same thing.  Excellent article definitely worth a read.

Also, regardless of the timing, China didn't force Trump to put the wrong people in charge of the federal response.

It was to points like this I wrote the the 'Timelines' post. If there were a catalog of nations that responded quickly and effectively to C-19, this would be a cogent point.

But there isn't. Just on a quick scan, the health ministers of France, Germany, Israel, Romania, Tunisia and so on have all resigned. The reactions of just about every nation in the West were inadequate and identical. I know Trump opponents want to characterize the US as uniquely flawed, but it just isn't so.

A comment of the same sort applies to the New Yorker article. One paragraph leads off with the assertion that Washington State has less than 2% of the C-19 cases in the nation. No problem with that, but I wondered what the population of the State of Washington is. Turns out it's just over 7,000,000 - or, in a nation of 330,000,000, just over two percent. So the statistic is not all that significant, all by itself, which makes you wonder why it leads a topic paragraph, and how many more of the claims may be non-contextualized. All I know for sure is that the authors don;t like DiBlasio very much.