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Comment by 6d6b73 | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting to compare what's CDC is doing right now ( messed up tests, not enough testing, protecting markets but not people) to what we can see CDC doing in movies like Contagion where they are on top of everything before anyone else even knows that the there is a new virus in the wild.

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It's not just the CDC, Hollywood movies are modern US propaganda. Soldiers and cops are cool, wars are fun and epic, CDC is omnipotent and omniscient, Eastern European/Asians are always the bad guys, &c.

I don’t find it interesting. One is a movie, the other is real life. It’s very difficult to collect accurate data, suss out errors, publish it, revise it, etc. I think the CDC and other agencies do as good a job as can be expected given the current tools and political climate.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that the CDC often does know about outbreaks and events before it's generally known to the public. Usually these instances are only of interest to the local communities they are operating in. This is of a different magnitude, and while they haven't slept on the job there's been both external factors and misjudgments in the response that have left them playing catch-up.

You know a handfull of people at the org, and were downplaying problems at the CDC last month.

The CDC slept on this during critical periods, and employees at the CDC did not step up and whistleblow when there was a chance to have a meaningful impact on the spread of the virus.

Stop making excuses for them.

See also how 'hacking' is portrayed in movies compared to real life.

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