Re: tonight's big news that the NYC outbreak derived from Europe, not China - reminder that it was clear back in Feb when those cases were arriving that the narrow US testing parameters were leaving us vulnerable.
The convo I referenced in this thread was with a doc in NYC.
The convo I referenced in this thread was with a doc in NYC.
I dig up old tweets like this not to dunk on the administration, but to highlight a larger point. Most of the mistakes that led to the current catastrophe were preventable and were widely pointed out in real time. They weren't corrected, and we're paying now.
Plenty of other mistakes are *still* being made. They're *still* being widely pointed out. And they're *still* not being corrected.
The criticisms that I and others make aren't motivated by partisan sniping; they're motivated by a desire to *fix mistakes in real time.*
The criticisms that I and others make aren't motivated by partisan sniping; they're motivated by a desire to *fix mistakes in real time.*
We won't have an effective federal response, and we won't defeat this virus, until the administration can acknowledge and fix those kinds of flaws proactively. If the USG can only start addressing problems once they've already blown up, we'll be stuck in this crisis indefinitely.
As I've said before, the China travel ban was a Maginot Line - it provided a false sense of security that diverted attention from the real vulnerabilities. Instead of ramping up early testing, hospital preparedness, etc, the USG held up a leaky sieve. nytimes.com/2020/04/08/sci…
(Also, as an aside, it is so cool that we can retrace viral history like this through genomic analysis. Also useful, etc. But so cool.)
