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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29685 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Baby, meet bathwater.

I know this is your usual brand of hyperbole, but that’s not logically sound. Inability to solve a problem does not imply limits on solving an easier one. At the very least, they should keep posting stats instead of burying the one they don’t like.

It was the single most disruptive event of my lifetime by a margin. Not only did the CDC fail to solve it, they made it worse. And they lied a lot.

What are some good things they do? All I know about them for sure is that they are worse than nothing during a pandemic and they are controlled by people who hate me. Why should I need more information than that to have the opinion that they should be dissolved?

There definitely ought to be some kind of punishment for astonishing under-performance.

The British shot an admiral who, in their judgement, 'failed to do his utmost' to defeat the enemy and accomplish his missions. There are various controversies about the circumstances, whether it was reasonable. But for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars, they got a very aggressive navy! They kept winning.

The CDC definitely failed to do its utmost.

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/999194177/early-cdc-coronavirus-test-came-with-inconsistent-instructions-cost-u-s-weeks

The review bears out reporting from NPR in November that revealed a small infectious disease lab at the CDC was aware the coronavirus test kit it had developed could fail 33% of the time but released it anyway. Under normal circumstances, that kind of failure rate would stop a test in its tracks.

They also prevented anyone else making their own tests for a while. Amongst many other things.

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2021/11/09/six_ways_the_cdc_failed_during_the_coronavirus_pandemic_802350.html

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