Well gosh cRusty, why are Birx and Fauci always talking about looking at the models?
Who is replicating anything 50x's independently?
I don't know how it is in California, I mean Gavin Newsome is your governor afterall . . . but in First World Alabama, they literally had a Johns Hopkins like Covid-19 website up in a day tracking every reported case in every county.
So, you're trying to tell me that (checks notes) that the well into the 6 figures ADPH Director is utterly incapable of looking at that nearly real time data and can't advise the state on how to move forward? He needs the Feds to tell him what to say to the governor? What sparkling diamonds of wisdom could the Feds impart that isn't already known relative to masks, social distancing, safer at home, crowds, capacities, cleaning? UABM is working with a private partner on their own vaccine, they have a cadre of epidemiologists, vectoring experts, virologists and the Dean of the UAB Med School is on the advisory board. Based on what I've seen thus far from Fauci, Birx, Redfield I think I'd just be charting my own course at this juncture.
I agree that Fauci, Birx, and Redfield have kinda sucked, regardless of whether or not they've been hamstrung by Trump.
I posted this a while back that lays out quite a bit of what I think the feds should be responsible for:
Here's what I would like to see from the federal level off the top of my head:
-Guidance for state and local health departments to test/trace/isolate; I'm sure states can figure it out but why not get everyone on the same page and constantly improve best practices?
-federal funding for local health departments to execute these plans: hiring and training manual contract tracers is probably the bulk of this
-federal support for workers quarantining (and the cost of their care)
-hard numbers for entering different reopening phases in different regions: maybe it's an R0, maybe it's ICU capacity, maybe it's deaths, just something like "restaurants reopen at 50% capacity when the R0 is under 0.8", but expanded to other thresholds and businesses. No need for each state to determine this on their own
-guidelines for travel between regions based on hard numbers. How should someone traveling from Michigan to Kansas be screened, for example? Do you set up interstate checkpoints? quarantine for domestic travel? Texas may actually be the model here
-national guaranteed sick pay of at least 14 days but probably longer
-Improve port of entry screening - obviously this is a little late but needs to be done when we come out of it
Also the feds can help with:
-which model has been working well and why?
-vetting, approval, and maybe even distribution of new treatments or vaccines - UAB's shouldn't just be for alabama
-mentioned above, but giving lockdown level guidance for the states: states can and should be in charge of tracking numbers closely but there should be quantifiable triggers for moving from one phase of lockdown to another: the German example of requiring an R0 under 1 to loosen anything is something the feds should be supplying all the states; this helps state DPH's have a leg to stand on against the dipshit governors who think they should reopen. It isn't like Maine should use different triggers for opening restaurants than Louisiana.
-masks are a great example of a federal fuckup - if the feds had said early on to wear masks (and been clear they weren't talking N95's) states could have followed and lives would have been saved. States shouldn't have had to independently figured that out on their own.
there's lots more but again, there's an important role that federal, state, and local health agencies should all be playing
