CDC staffers say White House putting politics ahead of science
edition.cnn.com
edition.cnn.com
The danger is that at some point an administration would be so adept at this that it's not painfully obvious. In theory, at the very least the electorate is informed enough at this point that they can consider this information when voting. Admittedly, that's pretty optimistic take on the US electorate however. An educated, well informed public is necessary for a successful democracy, and America's problems with education are well documented.
I speculate that previous administrations have been just as corrupt, but much better at hiding it.
This is just the perennial "both sides" argument and I don't buy it. The excuse is that "everybody does it and so we need to cheat to keep up at all" and although I'm sure president Trump believes it's true, it's just another example of the distorted reality of the current administration.
There is major republican control over all three branches of government and the president isn't actually inept, but look at how hard it is for him to get away with blatant corruption. The fact of the matter is that (at least for now) there are apolitical people in government who are willing to stand up to abuse of power and they typically do so. There's enough of them that I don't believe in some conspiracy that "all politicians have been committing crimes and everybody know it". That's just a political argument with no grounding.
tl;dr The number of abuses of power from the current administration isn't because they're worse at hiding it. It's because the president cheats more and has been doing it his entire life even before the presidency.
I do agree with the latter statement, but I completely understand why so many people just went 'fuck it' and voted for him. The Democrats are a nasty bunch too.
EDIT: if you're on a sinking ship, and one party argues in favor of arranging the deck chairs in a certain way and tut-tuts about suboptimal ways, and another party says (or is forced to say) "fuck it, arranging deck chairs is stupid.", would you not agree with the latter? Of course it's unfortunate when this is followed up with "let us buy new expensive deck chairs from this friend of mine", but that's not an issue when the media focuses on the arrangement of deck chairs.
What we disagree on is how we get out of it and and after four years of "burn the ship down" politics, what I've learned is that I'm one of the idiots on the ship. I'm told that the economy is doing well, but I've only seen tax breaks for the richest Americans and my wallet doesn't feel any heavier. My friend's small business was denied a PPE loan during the ongoing financial crisis while Trump's friends are able to get them without an issue. My feeling is that the current party might be saying "arranging deck chairs is stupid", but they're going behind my back anyways and arranging them for their friends and political allies.
Just the opposite, it seems like both Democrats and Republicans top priority seems to be seizing and expanding their own power. Nothing else matters, they just want this newfound freedom to operate in the margins for themselves. All the messaging is about how the other side is evil and THIS election is the most important of our lifetimes, you absolutely have to vote for our team and not the truly evil other team.
The first competent authoritarian demagogue is going to do much more damage than this administration. Nobody seems to care at all about the side effects, they just want their team to stay in power or get back in power.
Not everyone is totally drunk on power since Romney crossed over to convict and Democrats have critized Obama.
In some ways, it being grotesque is part of the appeal. Being subtle about it takes away the domination politics aspect of it, and what's the point of politics if it's not to hear the wailing of your enemies underfoot?
Now, what can we do about this administration if even moderate Republicans won't convict for illegal conduct despite recorded evidence? ("Something, something ... let the voters decide in next election.")
This will be the second worst outcome of the pandemic for the world (the worst being the harm and loss of life directly caused by the virus). The CDC does a lot, and they had built and relied on a lot of clout among experts and the general public. That's rare and valuable. But if that goes away, everything will get harder. It's already hard enough to convince people to adopt healthier behaviors when they believe the CDC gives good advice.
I've admired the CDC as an apolitical agency that is led by experts, wants to help instead of control, and is willing to adapt (at least more than most federal agencies). I just hope the state and local officials don't lose faith in the CDC.
Given this, it's not surprising that the party in power wants to do everything it can to keep the economy from freefalling.
The change in norms starting in 2016 may cause this to be different this election year, though.
Not saying the White House is not wrong here (they certainly are), but the CDC should also get its own house in order and return to 100% focus on infectious diseases, which was its original mission statement before rampant political scope creep.
In fact, here's the CDC's budget for fiscal year 2021:
https://www.cdc.gov/budget/fy2021/congressional-justificatio...
What would you cut?
And do you count obesity, tobacco and diabetes in "politicized" disease? and if you do, could you explain why?
It was at that point that it started its mission started to become politicized because there was no longer a very clear criteria about its mission statement. Preventing disease, injury and disability, especially those due to lifestyle choices is a very broad charter open to interpretation depending on your politics.
Some diseases, injuries and disabilities are such where there is universal or near universal agreement, and thus are less politicized. I won't specify any particulars of which ones I think are or are not worth pursuing because my politics are irrelevant to the point I'm making. Suffice it to say that agreement on what is worth pursuing exists on a spectrum from a disease, injury or disability that near 100% of Americans agree is worth addressing to ones where 50% or fewer think is worth addressing. The lower the percent of Americans that believe something is worth addressing with federal dollars, the more politicized it is.
The issue is that as you expand the scope from communicable diseases receiving 100% of attention to preventable diseases, injuries and disabilities, you necessarily dilute the scope and attention paid to the communicable diseases. Since 1992, the scope of the CDC has become so broad that's they don't really have communicable diseases as a priority and the problem with that is that we pay for that dilution of focus in the CDC's extreme incompetence when a pandemic arrives.
Prior to 1992, the President and Governors would be speaking to leadership at the CDC whose sole focus was communicable diseases. Since 1992, the President and Governors are increasingly likely to be speaking to career bureaucrats that may or may not have any professional expertise with communicable diseases and their prevention and such people will likely be several levels removed from the people at the CDC that still do work on communicable diseases.
tl;dr the Center for Disease Control has become a jack of all trades, master of none.
Also, a clarification on my numbers since I spoke imprecisely. Less than 10% is spent on emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases, which are the ones that concern us with an unexpected pandemic. $509M out of $6.594B.
$2.557B is spent on existing communicable diseases ($1.318B HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, STI, and TB and $730M immunization and respiratory diseases). $825M is spent protecting Americans from natural and bioterrorism threats, which is honestly shocking considering how badly they bungled this natural threat. $468M is spent on monitoring health and ensuring laboratory excellence, which is also shocking after they shipped lots of faulty tests and when it is the FDAs job to approve new tests.
Interesting.
COMMENTARY: Masks-for-all for COVID-19 not based on sound data https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commenta...
"In this study, researchers examined the blood oxygen levels in 53 surgeons using an oximeter. They measured blood oxygenation before surgery as well as at the end of surgeries.4 The researchers found that the mask reduced the blood oxygen levels (pa02) significantly. The longer the duration of wearing the mask, the greater the fall in blood oxygen levels." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18500410/
""" Conclusions: Considering our findings, pulse rates of the surgeon's increase and SpO2 decrease after the first hour. This early change in SpO2 may be either due to the facial mask or the operational stress. Since a very small decrease in saturation at this level, reflects a large decrease in PaO2, our findings may have a clinical value for the health workers and the surgeon """
Assuming the oxygenation levels are down because of the mask and not stress influencing your breathing (let's abandon occam's razor for now [0]), this "after the first hour" bit can tell you that maybe the word "significant" just mean that this is measurable and not dangerous? i mean if you drop from 97.5 to 95 over 4 hours, this is significant. Will that have an impact on you?
Moreover blood oxygenation do not drop linearly. If your body consider the oxygenation too low, your pulse will quicken, you will breath harder. Your body will try to keep your oxygen level high harder and harder.
This study only concerned surgeons who are often healthier than the average population. Would this have been done on people with lung issues with oxygen in low 90s high 80s, yes this would have been concerning.
Again ignoring the stress factor. And as long as the most plausible explanation is not overruled, it should prevail as any rational person will tell you. So this premise is false, or at least not proven (yet) and therefore even if your argument was good, the conclusion can be false.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12931769/ (first link i found on pubmed)
"The importance of these findings is that a drop in oxygen levels (hypoxia) is associated with an impairment in immunity. Studies have shown that hypoxia can inhibit the type of main immune cells used to fight viral infections called the CD4+ T-lymphocyte. This occurs because the hypoxia increases the level of a compound called hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), which inhibits T-lymphocytes and stimulates a powerful immune inhibitor cell called the Tregs. . This sets the stage for contracting any infection, including COVID-19 and making the consequences of that infection much graver. In essence, your mask may very well put you at an increased risk of infections and if so, having a much worse outcome."
5 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26179900/