Outrageous

First off, LA Times continues to impress with outstanding local Corona coverage. A good piece this AM about renters and landlords and the impact of the crisis. Very troubling situation.

That said, I also came across three little things that I find so frustrating and outrageous.

The CDC had a budget of 7.2 BILLION last year. And they couldn't build a COVID test.

Second, the majority of deaths related to COVID are coming out of nursing homes. Had we just done a more focused policy of devoting tests and resources to nursing home facilities, could we have prevented a whole lot more deaths, outbreaks, at a fraction of the cost?

Third, we are going to have meat shortages.

As frustrating and dumb as Trump is, the real story of COVID is the failure of American institutions.

My half baked ideas:

1) Fire the entire top brass of the CDC yesterday. Recruit Bill Gates (or someone of similar competence and stature) to take over. I am 100% serious. They need someone who with CEO experience, popular support, and a different way of looking at things. This probably sounds insane to anyone with experience working within government institutions. The only thing more insane is an institution with a budget of 7.2 billion failing at it's ONLY REASON FOR EXISTING.

2) Create 1 million new part time jobs. You think I'm joking. I'm reading about meat plants shutting down because of sick employees. These meat plants should be doubling their workplace tomorrow. They should be doubling the wages of workers. They should create housing options in abandoned hotels and college campuses for people to stay. If you get sick, you get paid for 2 weeks to sit on your ass and watch netflix while you recover.

3) The extended unemployment benefits should not just be handed out. CREATE JOBS! We need data on this corona virus, right? We should be doing massive data entry projects on symptoms, recovery times, experiences having the virus, what treatments are working, etc. People will say: it's too hard to train people. BOO FUCKING HOO. There are 22 million people collecting something in the range of 1k per week on unemployment. Spend that money ON SOMETHING. Here's an idea: a form that everyone who collects unemployment fills out tracking their symptoms of any type of sickness in their circle for as long as they collect unemployment. Will this information be useful at all? Maybe not. Maybe it will have all types of flaws. Or maybe it will tell us something deeply interesting about the virus -- at any rate, it would cost us exactly 0 dollars more than we're already spending.

4) Build 100 new toilet paper factories. 100 new diaper making facilities. Today. Start hiring. We are throwing billions at nothing, telling people to sit around. We should be building stuff. You say - that's inefficient - maybe we won't need it soon. SO WHAT! Build it, maybe it's useful for a short time, then wind it down again. You say people will get sick. I say: good! It'll help build herd immunity. I don't recommend people with heart conditions or diabetes go work at these places.