The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship agency for the nation’s public health, has seen its role minimized and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus.
The strained relationship between the CDC and the federal government was further laid bare when, according to The Washington Post, Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director of the CDC’s Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC’s COVID-19 mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”.
This is an unhelpful statement, but also a shocking indictment of an agency that was once regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control.
How did an agency that was the first point of contact for many national health authorities facing a public health threat become so ill-prepared to protect the public’s health?
In the decades following its founding in 1946, the CDC became a national pillar of public health and globally respected.
It trained cadres of applied epidemiologists to be deployed in the USA and abroad. CDC scientists have helped to discover new viruses and develop accurate tests for them.
CDC support was instrumental in helping WHO to eradicate smallpox. However, funding to the CDC for a long time has been subject to conservative politics that have increasingly eroded the agency’s ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis.
The George W Bush administration put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.
The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC’s capacity to combat infectious diseases.
Where does Sunday take place twice a week? And May 2 come before April 26?
The state of Georgia, as it provides up-to-date data on the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the latest bungling of tracking data for the novel coronavirus, a recently posted bar chart on the Georgia Department of Public Health’s website appeared to show good news: new confirmed cases in the counties with the most infections had dropped every single day for the past two weeks.
In fact, there was no clear downward trend. The data is still preliminary, and cases have held steady or dropped slightly in the past two weeks.
Experts agree that cases in those five counties were flat when Georgia began to reopen late last month.
✄
This unforced error — at least the third in as many weeks — is confounding observers who have noted sloppiness in case counts, death counts and other measures that are fundamental to tracking a disease outbreak.
Georgians check the data daily to decide whether it’s safe to reopen their businesses or send their children to daycare.
Policymakers use it for decisions affecting the health of more than 10 million Georgians.
New coronavirus hotspots are emerging in Republican heartland communities across multiple states, contradicting Donald Trump’s claims that infection rates are declining across the nation.
At a fraught press briefing on Monday, the president declared: “All throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.”
Yet county-specific figures show a surge in infection rates in towns and rural communities in red states such as Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and North and South Dakota, according to data tracking by the New York Times.
Trump’s claim is also contradicted by data used by the White House’s own pandemic taskforce to track new and emerging hotspots.
In a 7 May report, obtained by NBC News, the list of top 10 surge areas included Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; Racine, Wisconsin; Garden City, Kansas, and Central City, Kentucky – a predominantly white town of 6,000 people which saw a 650% week-on-week increase.
Another glorious day on God’s green earth. Go live your lives. Come out of your homes and make the lockdown unenforceable by your civil disobedience. That will best express your love for your fellow man…helping them to exercize their freedom.
Over the course of a week, as the national death toll from COVID-19 marched steadily toward 90,000, President Donald Trump returned repeatedly to the idea that America is at war with the coronavirus.
At a mask factory in Arizona May 5, an event honoring nurses the next day in the Oval Office and a wreath-laying at the National World War II Memorial two days later, he said Americans should think of ourselves as “warriors,” because “we can’t keep our country closed down for years” and that, as we have in the past, we would “triumph.”
The idea is to encourage us to collective effort and common sacrifice, to exhort us to put country ahead of ourselves and our conveniences, to stay strong in the face of psychic and physical pain, isolation, fear and loss.
And, of course, go to work, shop and dine out for the greater good, knowing that it may mean sacrificing our lives or loved ones. That’s what it means now to be a warrior.
But if we are all warriors, why aren’t the currently more than 85,000 American pandemic dead treated as patriots and honored for their sacrifices?
The metaphor appears to stop at death’s door. Our war dead are buried in the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Our pandemic dead are more likely to end up in the anonymous ground of Hart Island in New York, a sort of potter’s field where it has long been considered a dishonor for a soldier to lie.
It is a fate the national cemetery system was designed to avoid.
In fact, there is a conspicuous absence of any collective mourning at all. The reason is as simple as it is terrible: We share no understanding of these staggering losses as ours, as belonging to all Americans, as national.
I got a kick out of seeing these two headlines side by side on my news feed this morning…Who ya gonna believe?
The first headline cites he Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University as the source of the data.
The second is a statement by U.S. health secretary Alex Azar, a Trump appointee and attorney whose “medical” background is that he was a lobbyist for the drug industry.
Coronavirus updates: Texas reports single highest daily rate increase of infections.
I love Carmen and Winslow and Mr. Stantis by extension. And I care about them, my family and my loved ones, even myself, enough to be prudent in following sensible guidelines. No one is forcing me to stay at home; I CHOOSE to stay home for my health and yours.
starfish55 over 4 years ago
First! :O
Darsan54 Premium Member over 4 years ago
Yep, I’m calling a lot of people just check up on them.
Silly Season over 4 years ago
World-leading “Lancet medical Journal"
~
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship agency for the nation’s public health, has seen its role minimized and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus.
The strained relationship between the CDC and the federal government was further laid bare when, according to The Washington Post, Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director of the CDC’s Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC’s COVID-19 mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”.
This is an unhelpful statement, but also a shocking indictment of an agency that was once regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control.
How did an agency that was the first point of contact for many national health authorities facing a public health threat become so ill-prepared to protect the public’s health?
In the decades following its founding in 1946, the CDC became a national pillar of public health and globally respected.
It trained cadres of applied epidemiologists to be deployed in the USA and abroad. CDC scientists have helped to discover new viruses and develop accurate tests for them.
CDC support was instrumental in helping WHO to eradicate smallpox. However, funding to the CDC for a long time has been subject to conservative politics that have increasingly eroded the agency’s ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis.
The George W Bush administration put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.
The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC’s capacity to combat infectious diseases.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31140-5/fulltext
Silly Season over 4 years ago
Where does Sunday take place twice a week? And May 2 come before April 26?
The state of Georgia, as it provides up-to-date data on the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the latest bungling of tracking data for the novel coronavirus, a recently posted bar chart on the Georgia Department of Public Health’s website appeared to show good news: new confirmed cases in the counties with the most infections had dropped every single day for the past two weeks.
In fact, there was no clear downward trend. The data is still preliminary, and cases have held steady or dropped slightly in the past two weeks.
Experts agree that cases in those five counties were flat when Georgia began to reopen late last month.
✄
This unforced error — at least the third in as many weeks — is confounding observers who have noted sloppiness in case counts, death counts and other measures that are fundamental to tracking a disease outbreak.
Georgians check the data daily to decide whether it’s safe to reopen their businesses or send their children to daycare.
Policymakers use it for decisions affecting the health of more than 10 million Georgians.
https://www.ajc.com/news/state—regional-govt—politics/just-cuckoo-state-latest-data-mishap-causes-critics-cry-foul/182PpUvUX9XEF8vO11NVGO/
Silly Season over 4 years ago
New coronavirus hotspots are emerging in Republican heartland communities across multiple states, contradicting Donald Trump’s claims that infection rates are declining across the nation.
At a fraught press briefing on Monday, the president declared: “All throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.”
Yet county-specific figures show a surge in infection rates in towns and rural communities in red states such as Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and North and South Dakota, according to data tracking by the New York Times.
Trump’s claim is also contradicted by data used by the White House’s own pandemic taskforce to track new and emerging hotspots.
In a 7 May report, obtained by NBC News, the list of top 10 surge areas included Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; Racine, Wisconsin; Garden City, Kansas, and Central City, Kentucky – a predominantly white town of 6,000 people which saw a 650% week-on-week increase.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/new-us-coronavirus-hotspots-republican-heartland-areas
Brain Pudding over 4 years ago
Another glorious day on God’s green earth. Go live your lives. Come out of your homes and make the lockdown unenforceable by your civil disobedience. That will best express your love for your fellow man…helping them to exercize their freedom.
Silly Season over 4 years ago
Over the course of a week, as the national death toll from COVID-19 marched steadily toward 90,000, President Donald Trump returned repeatedly to the idea that America is at war with the coronavirus.
At a mask factory in Arizona May 5, an event honoring nurses the next day in the Oval Office and a wreath-laying at the National World War II Memorial two days later, he said Americans should think of ourselves as “warriors,” because “we can’t keep our country closed down for years” and that, as we have in the past, we would “triumph.”
The idea is to encourage us to collective effort and common sacrifice, to exhort us to put country ahead of ourselves and our conveniences, to stay strong in the face of psychic and physical pain, isolation, fear and loss.
And, of course, go to work, shop and dine out for the greater good, knowing that it may mean sacrificing our lives or loved ones. That’s what it means now to be a warrior.
But if we are all warriors, why aren’t the currently more than 85,000 American pandemic dead treated as patriots and honored for their sacrifices?
The metaphor appears to stop at death’s door. Our war dead are buried in the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Our pandemic dead are more likely to end up in the anonymous ground of Hart Island in New York, a sort of potter’s field where it has long been considered a dishonor for a soldier to lie.
It is a fate the national cemetery system was designed to avoid.
In fact, there is a conspicuous absence of any collective mourning at all. The reason is as simple as it is terrible: We share no understanding of these staggering losses as ours, as belonging to all Americans, as national.
https://www.startribune.com/almost-90-000-dead-and-no-hint-of-national-mourning/570506832/
streetbeater over 4 years ago
I got a kick out of seeing these two headlines side by side on my news feed this morning…Who ya gonna believe?
The first headline cites he Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University as the source of the data.
The second is a statement by U.S. health secretary Alex Azar, a Trump appointee and attorney whose “medical” background is that he was a lobbyist for the drug industry.
Coronavirus updates: Texas reports single highest daily rate increase of infections.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/coronavirus-updates-texas-reports-single-highest-daily-rate-092003718—abc-news-topstories.html
No spike in coronavirus in places reopening, U.S. health secretary says
https://news.yahoo.com/no-spike-coronavirus-places-reopening-132442853.html
RobinHood over 4 years ago
This could have been a nice positive strip to comment on today, and it started out that way. Too bad, a missed opportunity.
All You Need Is Love
Lennon/McCartney
Patinphx Premium Member over 4 years ago
I love Carmen and Winslow and Mr. Stantis by extension. And I care about them, my family and my loved ones, even myself, enough to be prudent in following sensible guidelines. No one is forcing me to stay at home; I CHOOSE to stay home for my health and yours.
jbmlaw01 over 4 years ago
Unicef warns lockdown could kill more than Covid-19 as model predicts 1.2 million child deaths
‘Indiscriminate lockdowns’ are an ineffective way to control Covid and could contribute to a 45 per cent rise in child mortality
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/unicef-warns-lockdown-could-kill-covid-19-model-predicts-12/?mod=article_inline
William Robbins Premium Member over 4 years ago
Covid Polling: https://xkcd.com/2305/