The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-19

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

WASHINGTON — Early on, the dozen federal officials charged with defending America against the coronavirus gathered day after day in the White House Situation Room, consumed by crises. They grappled with how to evacuate the United States consulate in Wuhan, China, ban Chinese travelers and extract Americans from the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships.

The members of the coronavirus task force typically devoted only five or 10 minutes, often at the end of contentious meetings, to talk about testing, several participants recalled. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its leaders assured the others, had developed a diagnostic model that would be rolled out quickly as a first step.

But as the deadly virus from China spread with ferocity across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen — because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels, according to interviews with more than 50 current and former public health officials, administration officials, senior scientists and company executives.

The result was a lost month, when the world’s richest country — armed with some of the most highly trained scientists and infectious disease specialists — squandered its best chance of containing the virus’s spread. Instead, Americans were left largely blind to the scale of a looming public health catastrophe.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-lost-month-how-a-failure-to-test-blinded-the-us-to-covid-19/ar-BB11Qo84?li=BBnb7Kz

Everything Trump touches dies.

[pat_k]

2. See also timeline of failures -- lost shot at containment

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=13168592

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. US and SKorea got first cases within a day of each other. SKorea tested liberally, early. . . . nt

[gibraltar72]

4. That isn't a fair comparison. They have a functioning government.

[greenjar_01]

5. By January 14 they should have been moving

Two weeks after the thing went nuts in Wuhan. They should have been on it.

SIX WEEKS they had to get us ready, assuming a March 1 date for widespread community infection in the US (Washington state). SIX WEEKS.

Let me be clear: if Donald Trump was not President, asleep at the wheel and downplaying the threat to save the markets, a lot of the 2,000 people now dead from this would be alive. Th catastrophe would have been greatly mitigated.

SIX MOTHERFUCKING WEEKS they sat on their hands, goofed on those warning them, played stupid games.

SIX WEEKS. People are dead because of this inaction.

[underpants]

6. Good long read.

They couldn't get out of their own way. I guess I'm too much of a team player to understand how personal fights get in the way of the obvious take or goal.

Not using the WHO tests as at least a starting point appears to be one of the big failures here. Tapping into Stanford and other labs was a huge mistake too.

The main problem was Trump. No vision other than if Obama did it it must be wrong. Also he thinks he really is that smart, that he could figure this out by himself.