The CDC Said No.
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Or: Central Planning Gave the Epidemic a Head Start
Writing at Reason, John Stossel puts out a good summary of how central planning is responsible for the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic within the United States. The following, in particular, should be shouted from the rooftops, because it accounts for the greatest obstacle to fighting this disease that we face: the lack of testing early on.
But here in America?COVID-19 deaths leveled off in South Korea.
Our medical establishment, at the start of this marathon, thanks to the CDC. (Image by Tony Rojas, via Unsplash, license.)
That's because people in Korea could easily find out if they had the disease. There are hundreds of testing locations -- even pop-up drive-thru testing centers.
Because Koreans got tested, Korean doctors knew who needed to be isolated and who didn't. As a result, Korea limited the disease without mass quarantines and shortages. [bold added]
When the new coronavirus appeared, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made its own tests and insisted that people only use those CDC tests. But the CDC test often gave inaccurate results. Some early versions of the test couldn't distinguish between the new coronavirus and water.Many are saying Flatten the curve! now, but a different slogan should inform any post mortem: The CDC said no.
Private companies might have offered better tests, and more of them, but that wasn't allowed. The World Health Organization even released information on how to make such tests, but our government still said no. Instead, all tests must go through the government's cumbersome approval process. That takes months. Or years. [bold added]
At the time when the functionaries staffing this agency should have risen above the desire for prestige in the name of its stated purpose, they chose to protect their turf, rather than our health.
Remember this when Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the like propose to make every aspect of the medical sector resemble the CDC, by taking over the rest of it.
Set aside the whole question of whether it is right for the government to run an industry. (It isn't.) Government officials are not gods. Like us, they have limited knowledge, they can make mistakes, and they can succumb to the desire to look good. This example should make it apparent that it is foolish to place so much power over our lives into the hands of a few. A free, decentralized medical sector, with numerous talented individuals -- competing to profit by solving difficult and important problems -- sounds much better by the day.
-- CAV
2 comments:
There are two additional aspects to the this pandemic that are worth considering when it comes to central planning in the future:
1) Lack of testing by the CDC made it impossible to know where we are on the curve. There is evidence that COVID-19 was here as early as January. Due to lack of testing we have no idea how many cases there are or have been in the USA; the only thing we know is that the official numbers are underestimates. Central planning not only removed our capacity to act, but it rendered us unable to even gather data upon which TO act.
2) The federal government has left emergency responses largely up to the individual states. This has allowed for more nuanced responses to the pandemic. California is more or less locked down, for example, while Alabama is largely open for business. This has allowed the economy to limp along. Imagine if the decision had been made by the CDC--we'd have shut down the country, with a death toll in the hundreds of thousands at best!
It's still central planning, yes, but it demonstrates the practical benefits of allowing decisions to be made by those closer to the events.
Dinwar,
I keep hearing anecdotal evidence about a weird flu season in which people have shown up with flu symptoms, but tested negative for flu. But in addition to the slow roll-out of tests for the virus, we are behind the ball on the serological testing that could tell us whether such things were part of the early arrival you mention.
I read an article about Britain's initial strategy being based on such an idea -- that they were seeing the worst of an epidemic that had already been going on for some time.
The testing aspect of this epidemic has been a real travesty.
Gus
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