Which folks at the Centers for Disease Control are going to get fired for "incompetence" (if that is what it is)?
The original excuse for the drastic actions, the reasoning that led to the shutdown of our economy, was that 6.6 million people would be dead within 6 weeks if we did not.
Then revised to 3.4M,
then 2.1M,
then 1.2M,
then 600K,
then 200K. (I may have missed a reduction in the revisions somewhere).
The tens of thousands of hospital beds needed....were never needed. The ventilators.....not needed. The shortages of beds and ventilators never materialized...because we did not have even 1% of the cases that were originally forecast. The extra beds in the convention centers were never needed. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent setting up extra medical centers that remained idle.
Even worse than the cost of the unneeded preparations is the cost to our economy. I believe that the percentage of unemployed US citizens is nearly 30% of our workforce.
This wasn't a slightly high guess of cases.....this wasn't a minor overshoot....this was a very nearly 99% overestimate. Not high by 20% or even 50%...by 99%. Even New York, the poster child for failure of isolation and "Social Distancing" protocol....missed the mark by well over 98%.
So who in the CDC will be fired? These folks are supposed to be the "experts". If this is the best they can do (and in a situation like this, it SHOULD be the best they can do), then we need to find some real experts....not the crop of failures we have.
If we really need the CDC as it currently exists.
It is not even worth discussing the layers of incompetence within the WHO here at this time.
The original excuse for the drastic actions, the reasoning that led to the shutdown of our economy, was that 6.6 million people would be dead within 6 weeks if we did not.
Then revised to 3.4M,
then 2.1M,
then 1.2M,
then 600K,
then 200K. (I may have missed a reduction in the revisions somewhere).
The tens of thousands of hospital beds needed....were never needed. The ventilators.....not needed. The shortages of beds and ventilators never materialized...because we did not have even 1% of the cases that were originally forecast. The extra beds in the convention centers were never needed. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent setting up extra medical centers that remained idle.
Even worse than the cost of the unneeded preparations is the cost to our economy. I believe that the percentage of unemployed US citizens is nearly 30% of our workforce.
This wasn't a slightly high guess of cases.....this wasn't a minor overshoot....this was a very nearly 99% overestimate. Not high by 20% or even 50%...by 99%. Even New York, the poster child for failure of isolation and "Social Distancing" protocol....missed the mark by well over 98%.
So who in the CDC will be fired? These folks are supposed to be the "experts". If this is the best they can do (and in a situation like this, it SHOULD be the best they can do), then we need to find some real experts....not the crop of failures we have.
If we really need the CDC as it currently exists.
It is not even worth discussing the layers of incompetence within the WHO here at this time.
Perhaps we should reconsider whether we want the government in the catastrophe prediction game.
ReplyDeleteNobody will get fired... sigh
ReplyDeleteIncompetence or the natural progression of learning about something that essentially didn't exist
ReplyDeletesix months ago?
Models and projections are only as good as the data plugged in to the computers. Even now,
how much good data do we really have?
BP: Who would you suggest replace the government in the catastrophe prediction game?
Pete
I've got an over-the-moon Left wing relative. She's been telling me "Listen to the experts." I ask her "Which ones; the ones who've been saying "It's OK, go out and play!" or the ones who've been saying "IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!! Turns out, they're one and the same...
ReplyDeleteI don't know ANYONE with Coronavirus. I DO know PLENTY of people who are out of work though...
"Pete".
ReplyDeleteIncompetence in that the models that they used to decide to shut down our country were terribly incorrect. Like nearly an order of magnitude incorrect. The data was there, they chose to use worst case numbers and essentially multiply by a factor of 100. We have good models for the spread of disease. The "experts" ignored them.
Folks who made these decisions should be fired.
First, you don't have to use quotes around my name--Pete is my real name.
ReplyDeleteHow do you know any of the models are incorrect? This isn't done yet. Currently there are 2000+ people dying each day.
We're 12-18 months from a possible vaccine. At this point we aren't even sure that if you've had the disease, you can't get it again which would mean we're a long way from herd immunity.
I don't think we're going to get millions of fatalities like the early models showed, but they were based on us doing nothing. We
took action, drastic action, and saved lives. How many? How about we let this thing play out and find out.
Then we can talk about firing people.
Pete