To get something done, anything done, you need to do one of three things, to wit: lead, follow or get out of the way. Too much of the government is dedicated to option four, obstruction. In the Chinese Wuflu pandemic no alleged public servants have done more damage than the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration, from Red State:
At the center of just about every delay and misstep in this sorry saga, one does not find politicians or even political appointees, rather one finds the incompetent, turf-conscious, implacable bureaucrats in two of the agencies directly responsible for public health: the CDC and the FDA. In particular, the FDA seems to be at ground zero as a lackadaisical workforce used to being kowtowed to by Pharma and the medical device industry suddenly found itself under intense pressure to at least pretend it cared about what it was supposed to be doing.
More from Red State: :
The most important point the doctors make is that we don’t have the luxury of time. There are currently larger studies being conducted, but the results won’t be available for weeks. They explain, “We have a drug with an excellent safety profile but limited clinical outcomes—and no better alternatives until long after this disaster peaks. We can use this treatment to help save lives and prevent others from becoming infected. Or we can wait several weeks and risk discovering we didn’t do everything we could to end this pandemic as quickly as possible.” It will also help contain the spread of the disease.
We have drugs used for decades, with a manageable set of side effects, a disease which can kill in a matter of days and a government bureaucracy demanding studies which can take months, if not years. At least Comrade Bernie could pine about the Chinese solution for incompetent bureaucrats, summary execution.
