[paulmd]

> Perhaps covid-19 was making the rounds in the US even before we officially declared it was here.

Yes, highly possible, one reearcher believes it was circulating in Washington state since at least middle of January. The term of art is "cryptic transmission".

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-may-have-s...

Part of the problem is that the CDC's definitions were so strict at the time that you could not be tested unless you had personally traveled to China, so all cases of domestic transmission were being discounted at that time.

[dmix]

> Part of the problem is that the CDC's definitions were so strict at the time

Do you think this problem will be rectified in future epidemics? Or is this just the nature of testing and/or the healthcare bureaucracy at the national/international level?

The amount of times the article mentions Biogen employees getting denied testing, days before the rest of the company would find out they had reached 70, really bothers me.

[paulmd]

> Do you think this problem will be rectified in future epidemics? Or is this just the nature of testing and/or the healthcare bureaucracy at the national/international level?

I think this is such a broad question with so many factors it's not really possible to answer.

I think the fact that it was a flu-like disease contributed to an overall lax attitude towards this. If it had been Ebola, health authorities would have clamped down hard and fast.

I think the fact that it started in China was a contributing factor. China didn't want to look like a source of disease, China didn't want its reputation on the international stage damaged by criticism from CDC and WHO and so those authorities were possibly more mute than normal. And there is another potential dimension here if this ends up being a military weapon that accidentally escaped from Wuhan BSL-4 containment. That may be a reason they came down on those researchers who sounded the alarm - those researchers worked at that BSL-4 facility and may have been discussing something that was classified and the chinese government didn't want discussed. This also may have been one dimension behind the Trump administration classifying the early briefings (although more generally I think they just didn't want to spook the market).

Finally, it's also impossible to separate the response from the administration. The Trump administration cut the budget for the epidemic response teams that would have been our first defense against this, two years ago. And their overall administration has been petty at best and malicious at worst. Just like how he went after the NWS officials who corrected his (completely wrong) forecast predictions for the hurricane landfall, there has been a reluctance to countermand him or correct him even when he's doing something completely wrong lest he come back at CDC or WHO and further sabotage the response in revenge. He spent the first two months of this year arguing that it was a hoax being cooked up by the deep state CDC to damage the economy and hurt his re-election chances. Even the Bush administration would have been far more competent at responding to this, Trump's leadership is exceptionally bad. You can say that's tribalism but the reason people are so all-in on that is because it's true, the Trump administration's petty, childish behavior has significantly damaged the US response to this crisis, both actively and passively.

Most other crises eventually fade from the news. Puerto Rico still isn't rebuilt but nobody cares anymore. etc etc. He hoped it would be a tempest in a teapot that blew over and it didn't. He's reluctantly come to terms with that in the last week.

If this whole question was a trap to make me say something downvotable, oh well, so be it, but it's all factually true and that's my honest opinion.

[paulmd]

If you'd like further confirmation:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/03/anthony-fauci-donald...

> According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, nearly everything the president has said about the coronavirus is wrong.

/shrug

Why do you think that would happen? Why would the president just contradict his subject experts with literally multiple decades of experience in this field? Why would he literally impede the state agencies from doing the testing necessary to monitor and oversee the status of the disease?

Why would he say the hurricane is going to curve into an entirely different state from where the NWS says it's going to go? Why would he then threaten to fire anyone who refuses to cook the forecasts to comply with his incorrect claims?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/climate/hurricane-dorian-...

Dude is an actual literal child who can't stand to not be the smartest guy in the room, and if anyone corrects him they're fired. He's a nightmare boss and the only reason anyone tolerates him is because he's "on their team" Anyone who does is going to end up like Romney: "not physically safe in our presence anymore".

Can't wait for the reversal in a couple years: "nobody ever supported this guy, everyone knew he was a crazy from day 1". But that's only going to be once he's out of office.