Tracking the next pandemic: Avian Flu Talk |
Gestalt#43 – SARS-2 Pandemic |
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Tabitha111
Adviser Group Joined: January 11 2020 Location: Virginia Status: Offline Points: 11640 |
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Posted: March 22 2021 at 6:10am |
monotreme1000 | March 22, 2021 For many years, I have argued that the public health establishment in the United States was largely incompetent and would be unable to handle a serious pandemic. I received pushback on this from some in Flublogia who were themselves connected to the public health establishment. It gives me no pleasure to be proven right on this issue. As I have said many times, this is not a partisan issue. Many of the incompetents in public health were in place before Trump became President. Many of them are still in place. At this point, I do not see any indication that politicians recognize the problem or feel any particular urgency to clean house and hire people with the right skills and attitude. We live in the 21st Century and have unparalleled tools with which to analyze data related to public health. These tools are not being used. Go to any public health site and look at their webpage. For epidemiology, what we need is experts in big data, database management and molecular genetics and people who will be aggressive about collecting data from the States. What we have is experts on phone questionnaires and brown-nosing politicians. I wish the new Director of the CDC well. But thus far, her public comments about the CDC personnel seemed aimed at soothing demoralized employees rather than cleaning house and replacing proven incompetents. She appears to be a public health insider who will place an emphasis on playing nice with politicians and the same public health officials who failed us this past year. Waiting for Lander When I heard that Dr. Eric Lander had been chosen to be director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, I had some hope that he would bring viral sequencing into the 21st Century, something he is especially well-qualified to do. The Germans and GISAID I have been disturbed for some time that the Chancellor of Germany has been forming alliances with dictators in China and Russia. It reminds one of Germany's unhappy predilection to be on the wrong side in World Wars. The current Chancellor of Germany is anti-American, an attitude she shares with many others in her government. Why does this matter now? Back in 2009, I wrote about the founding of GISAID: "Peter Bogner’s Excellent Skiing Techniques and Killer Flu Database"Peter Bogner’s Excellent Skiing Techniques and Killer Flu Database – Monotreme's Blog (wordpress.com) and the almost unbelievable control of much of flu virus sequences by a ski instructor, Peter Bogner. All mention of Mr. Bogner has apparently been scrubbed from the GISAID site. GISAID - History Scientists who want to contribute to saving the world can contribute their data to the National Center for Biotechnology Information. SARS-CoV-2 Resources - NCBI (nih.gov) It is available to everyone in the world, without restriction. It is funded by the US government. |
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