Instapundit linked to a
NYPost article on 7 ways to stop a plague.
don't bother to read it: it is a WAGD (we're all gonna die) post with an agenda:
Sadly, epidemic prevention doesn’t currently seem to be a priority for the US government. In February, the CDC announced they would need to cut their global disease-prevention efforts by 80 percent due to lack of funding.
all over the internet:
WAPO here.
one wonders if this is true, or similar to the "
Banned words" kerfuffle a couple months ago that turned out to be fake news.
what was cut was an
Obamacare part of the funding.
and it seems to be do gooder stuff for bureaucrats to implement programs to investigate stuff that affect people.
as in bloated bureaucracy where most of the funding goes to pencil pushers, and good folks spend a lot of time in meetings and in "documentation" or "writing proposals".
reminds me of the IHS: We had two docs, six nurses, two in lab and one in x ray, eight in medical records, and an office full of a dozen bureaucrats to process paperwork so our people could get care.
and I saw the same number of people a day (about 20) that I saw in private practice, where I had a secretary and a nurse (and later, a part time typist).
to hire someone took months of paperwork, as if people could sit around that long and not get other job offers.
I would apply for Educational grants, and find that they would pay for it two days before the conference was scheduled, and in one conference, sponsored by a government office, I didn't find I had been accepted until the week afterward, because of the delay in processing my paperwork. (I learned quickly to go to regular CME meetings and pay for it myself and hope I would be reimbursed, and then put up with the lecture by the bureaucrat why this was wrong).
The months to find replacements of medical personnel meant msot of these clinics were short on people who actually worked with patients, so we were always overworked.
as for prevention programs: Yup. we had them.
So, for example, to get money to set up a diabetic teaching program, you had to write a complicated proposal and send it upstream and wait...and wait... and finally you got funding, maybe, for a dietician to come and give a couple of talks.
Then you had to do paperwork to get the dietician hired, taking into consideration if they had dibs on the job because they worked for the government or if they had a CDIB card.
Ditto for equipment and repairing stuff...the clinic took 3 years to get a new badly needed extension, and we couldn't use the defribrillator when we got it because it hadn't been okayed by the electrical expert (a good idea, but why so long?).
To Know A Fly is a humorous novel about scientific research, and shows that even 50 years ago, how much time was wasted in getting money:
It is believed in some quarters that to become a successful modern biologist requires a college education and a substantial grant from the Federal Government. The college education not infrequently is as useful for acquiring proficiency in the game of Grantsmanship as it is for understanding biology.
No self-respecting modern biologist can go to work without money for a secretary, a research associate, two laboratory assistants, permanent equipment, consumable supplies, travel, a station wagon for field collecting, photographic supplies, books, animals, animal cages, somebody to care for the animals, postage, telephone calls, reprints, and last, but by no means least, a substantial sum (called overhead) to the university to pay for all the stenographers hired to handle all the papers and money transactions that so big a grant requires.
as to how to handle an epidemic:
Here is an article on
SARS, which was stopped by old fashioned ways.
I am not in favor of cutting funding needed to prevent disease, and am worried that the bureaucrats will decide to cut needed personel instead of cutting all those paper pushers and excessive regulations that cost a lot of money and cut productivity.
and don't tell me that good people in the government bureaurocracy wouldn't do that to poor people.
I was told that one reason we were so understaffed and underequipped on one New Mexico reservation was because the government decided it was only 30 miles to a civilian hospital, so there was no reason we needed a hospital instead of a clinic (the fact that the civilian hospital was over a 7000 foot mountain pass didn't matter, nor that often our patients had to drive 30 miles to get to us because they weren't allowed to go there by themselves for care, without our okay.)
So for three months, we had to send every x ray over that mountain pass because our x ray tech quit (you couldn't put out an ad for a new tech before the final day of work, you know: then it took a lot of paperwork to find someone... yes, they could have hired a temporary replacement but no money).
oh yes: And we had to close the place for two weeks after our boiler exploded, which meant no heat. In the wintertime.
Casinos and tribal take over have helped all of this a bit, but anyone who is in love with single payment medicine should just ask their local Native American about it.
so ignore the kerfuffle and wait and see what happens.
But I worry, not that there will not be funding, but that the entrenched bureaucrats will deliberately do something to make a disaster.
But the, after working for the government, I am cynical in this.
