[2006alum]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/whistleblo...d-warnings

Yes, it's a whistleblower complaint from a disgruntled head of BARDA, but some of his accounts, which appears to have been supported by contemporaneous emails, are pretty damning.

Bright’s attempts to sound the alarm about mask shortages persisted from there. In a meeting with other health officials on February 7, he insisted that the federal government needed to place orders to ramp up production of N95 masks in order to protect healthcare workers and first responders. But an HHS supply chain team pushed back, saying there was “no indication of a supply chain shortage or of issues with masks,” according to the complaint.

BC

Is there any good reason not to despair by how badly our country has responded to this? It's clear the federal government was inept from the start. The few bright spots have been some of the the Task Force members, but the Task Force is about to be disbanded, and Trump is back to campaigning on the economy and pressuring states to reopen.

At the state and local level, the responses were uneven but at least for a while, most jurisdictions seemed to take this seriously, and impose a Shelter in Place order. Yet to my knowledge, almost no jurisdictions are ready to do testing and tracing at the level necessary to stanch the virus post reopening. And despite polls showing the vast majority of Americans don't want to "reopen" the economy, most states seem to be succumbing to pressure from the fringe protestors and Faux News. 

Meanwhile, we are still eclipsing 2,000 deaths per day. Given the delay from infection to death, these deaths are probably from infections that emerged during the time period when the largest segment of the U.S. population was sheltering in place -- in early April. So this is probably close to the best we're going to hope for the foreseeable future.

I am struggling to understand this response as anything other than an unstated concession that we lack the collective ability to slow the virus, so we're just going to resort to a de facto herd immunity strategy, and those who can afford to SiP or take significant social distancing measures for 12-18 months can do so, while everyone else fends for themselves. 

Am I missing something? Today I feel more dismayed by our prospects today than have in a quite a while.

[2006alum]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/whistleblo...d-warnings

Yes, it's a whistleblower complaint from a disgruntled head of BARDA, but some of his accounts, which appears to have been supported by contemporaneous emails, are pretty damning.

Bright’s attempts to sound the alarm about mask shortages persisted from there. In a meeting with other health officials on February 7, he insisted that the federal government needed to place orders to ramp up production of N95 masks in order to protect healthcare workers and first responders. But an HHS supply chain team pushed back, saying there was “no indication of a supply chain shortage or of issues with masks,” according to the complaint.

BC

Is there any good reason not to despair by how badly our country has responded to this? It's clear the federal government was inept from the start. The few bright spots have been some of the the Task Force members, but the Task Force is about to be disbanded, and Trump is back to campaigning on the economy and pressuring states to reopen.

At the state and local level, the responses were uneven but at least for a while, most jurisdictions seemed to take this seriously, and impose a Shelter in Place order. Yet to my knowledge, almost no jurisdictions are ready to do testing and tracing at the level necessary to stanch the virus post reopening. And despite polls showing the vast majority of Americans don't want to "reopen" the economy, most states seem to be succumbing to pressure from the fringe protestors and Faux News. 

Meanwhile, we are still eclipsing 2,000 deaths per day. Given the delay from infection to death, these deaths are probably from infections that emerged during the time period when the largest segment of the U.S. population was sheltering in place -- in early April. So this is probably close to the best we're going to hope for the foreseeable future.

I am struggling to understand this response as anything other than an unstated concession that we lack the collective ability to slow the virus, so we're just going to resort to a de facto herd immunity strategy, and those who can afford to SiP or take significant social distancing measures for 12-18 months can do so, while everyone else fends for themselves. 

Am I missing something? Today I feel more dismayed by our prospects today than have in a quite a while.