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wnevets

> The CDC Has a Cyclospora Lab. DOGE Downsized It Last Year [1]

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/cdc-cyclospora-lab-doge-downsize...

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DOGE will be seen by historians as the cause of so many crisis…

optimistic, this requires the arc of history to bend towards non-fascism.

Fair. Though based on previous experiments fascist regimes aren’t that stable and competent, they have a tendency to self-destruct once they are in power. It’s a sad state of affairs that is considered optimistic

Well, there will at least be historians in other countries covering the downfall in detail, if there is indeed a bigger downfall than has already happened.

Democracies are pretty good at studying the failures of other countries and learning about them.

‘and learning about them’

I’m not at all convinced about this part.

To be fair, they said learning _about_ them, not learning _from_ them.

Optimistic, this requires a civilization to have a history.

Fascism always collapses, the question is only how much will remain by the time that occurs.

And whether or not what replaces it is any better. Historically speaking, widespread democracy is still a recent development.

That's always an open question. Fascism does frequently collapse into other authoritarian regimes, too. But fascism itself will always fail.

It is a movement motivated by the petty grievances of cowards and fools, and the same hate and violence they project outward always turns inward at the end.

What definition of fascism are you using? Is China fascist?

> What definition of fascism are you using?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

> Is China fascist?

What a strange and completely irrelevant question.

China is also fascist by the usual four measures (cult-like worship, hyper-nationalism, a merciless surveillance apparatus and the glorification of military strength), but that has nothing to do with fascism in the USA.

I was more interested in the claim that fascism always collapses because China feels like a durable counter-example. But if you don't classify China as fascist, it is irrelevant.

Yeah, as Norm Macdonald put it:

> “It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”

>the arc of history to bend towards non-fascism.

From wikipedia: "Fascism [...] rose to prominence primarily in Europe of the interwar period"

So what were humans doing for all the thousands of years after the advent of recorded history but before that?

Fascism with a different name

You don't need historians to see the crisis as it was happening and as it's ongoing, the only question we need to ask is how long should the people held accountable be in prison for?

For abusing democratic offices the penalty should be at least one decade in keeping up with ancient Athenian democratic traditions.

Well, I said historians because I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. The US is almost completely captured. The time to send people to prison was during the previous administration. I still cannot believe that Americans re-elected a literal failed insurrectionist

I agree, if people voted for this I wouldn’t expect any ramifications at all. People have to be so far gone to have actually wanted this that they’re not just going to change their mind.

It is the government equivalent of El Muskito buying Twitter and then wantonly disabling components with the assumption they do nothing.

Except no one died because Twitter malfunctions here and there.

TBF the companies that failed to contain the disease are at fault, not the agency.

You can't reasonably expect government to protect everyone from everything.

How would we know which companies to blame without organizations like the CDC?

What would they even be blamed for in the first place if there were no regulatory expectations for them to adhere to?

Exactly, and profit is too great a drug for 99% of companies. Consumers just aren’t going to be willing or able to collectively buy up research and regulatory bodies themselves or we would already have a replacement.

To be fair to whom exactly? The organization tasked with disease protection and which claims they exist for "saving lives"?

Only in some libertarian fever dream.

Functional societies has central functions to ensure that safety of its people.

You can reasonably expect the government to measure the scale and scope of an outbreak after it's occurred and force companies to appropriately recall any damaged produce. You know, what they've been doing for decades before Musk gutted them.

I don't know what to tell you, man. It's not normal for thousands of people to be sickened by foodborne illness AFTER the government knows where it's from.

Imagine how frustrated the laid off staff must be, especially if they end up either the illness themselves.

DOGE is simply a tool of global capital, and shouldn't be singled out as the root cause of anything. Its purpose was to cut money from being redistributed through government programs, so it could go to the financial markets instead via tax cuts for the wealthiests and inefficient defense contracts. It achieved its goal wonderfully.

More than that it was an enabling tool.

Republicans for decades have claimed that the government cant do anythingright/good and that we must deregulate and let the free market do everything.

Problem is the government is actually pretty good at doing somethings, so Republicans break things until they can use them as examples of government inefficiency then privatize it for there own profit.

Doge was made to break the government so Republicans could point at what was left and say "see government is broken"

But Musk ran it and he's and idiot that had no idea what he doing so istead of it slowly all going to shit so no one would remember it all working as intended it started to fall apart to soon. So we still have people that will point to the real cause.

In explanations I believe, over the decades government programs have been difficult to deal with in good part because Republicans and their like (sorry if this seems political, but they’re the ones doing it) while they can’t stop all the legislation, they have enough influence even then to make the administration structure and requirements deliberately horrible and underfunded.

One of the first big bullets they put into the Affordable Care Act after it became effective, was to zero out funding of its provisions that were/are mandated by law.

The “government can’t do shit” people should spend some time looking at the reasons why. Government isn’t perfect — it’s made up of the same humans that compose the rest of society — but it often isn’t half bad, and many people going into it have good-hearted and honorable intentions. Some turn bitter or disengaged at the experience — as designed — but many fight such negativity to the bitter end.

Oh, and regarding the ACA, many don’t know or have forgotten that businesses were clamoring for it or some/any solution, facing 25% year over year premium increases for their insured employees. And the ACA has and continues to provide many substantial improvements and benefits to group policy insurance holders that have no ready optics and hype like the healthcare marketplace.

Have insurance through your employer and think the ACA does nothing for you? You’re wrong.

So, thanks, gub’mint!

Well, shit in peace i guess.

Well it's definitely not in piece/s I guess

From 11 to 3 employees. Doesn't seem that outrageous outside of such a time of crisis (since this lab seem dedicated solely to outbreaks, not research), which is when the parent entity should temporarily allocate more people.

> From 11 to 3 employees. Doesn't seem that outrageous outside

I hope I never have you as my manager If you think a ~70% reduction in head count isn't outrageous.

I've worked along scientists a few times, many twiddling their thumbs and coasting along on the back of their PhD. No idea if this applies here, mind you, but I don't see an innate need for that many people, even if this disease has major outbreaks (let's say > 50 cases) every few years.

3 does seem a bit low, though.

> I've worked along scientists a few times

You should have mentioned this up front so we all knew you were fully qualified to understand the staffing needs of critical governmental health organizations.

Impressive judgment from someone who presumably has no knowledge of the types of problems the lab was addressing, the scope of research, the actual individuals employed, or the prior and anticipated impact of their work. This was the whole problem with DOGE: cuts were indiscriminate and based more on feels than factual data. I won't posit that those cuts were all downside - but we will be paying to discover which were really needed for years to come.

> many twiddling their thumbs

Do you think some of them were wasting their time, by posting on various online forums only slightly related to their jobs?

We should also extend that to firefighters, they do nothing most of the time, anyway. Let the fires burn everything and after that let the insurance solve the problems for those who have it.

The thing about crises is by the time you’re in them, they’re gonna cost way more to clean up than just not getting there in the first place.

Sounds like the lag time between going from 11 to 3 employees and having an outbreak was ~a year, so unless this is wrapped up fast enough and cheaply enough to cost less than 8 FTEs, we didn’t save a whole lot of money and we caused a whole lot of distress, so it’s hard to really call this a win.

That ignores that point that this department only activates after the outbreak has started, so if it was increased to 100 people it wouldn’t have prevented the crisis.

The article indicates that the department responds to crises, it did not indicate that was its only function.

While you're at it, give AI to the 3 employees and they will do the work of 30 /s

Astroturfing still paying good?

We've discovered that ambulance drivers are only driving people to hospital for 5% of the week. As such we've cut the 20 staff that used to give 120% coverage to 5. The 4 days of coverage is still more than 8x more than needed to cover working 5% of the week, so obviously we don't expect any deaths on the days we don't have any ambulance drivers working.

In the unlikely event excess ambulance drivers are needed we'll temporarily hire them on an ad hoc basis at double the normal rate. They will obviously happily jump on this opportunity, working less than 5% of the year at double pay is much better for just those hours than being paid 60% of what you'd get as an ambulance driver in another career all year round and actually being able to afford your mortgage.

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