1) I heard that you actually didn’t ignore unilateralist curse when preparing this and got outside feedback.
2) The claims were both correct and relevant to the CDC, (see my response to jimrandomh)
I’d change my mind about CDC if I were convince that these (or similar criticisms) were correct, as above, and were fair criticisms given the fact that you’re speaking post-hoc from an epistemically superior vantage point of having are more information than they did when they made their decisions. And remember that CDC is an organization with legal constraints that make them unable to do some of the things you think are good ideas, and that they have been operating under a huge staff shortage due to years of a hiring freeze and budget cuts.
And remember that CDC is an organization with legal constraints that make them unable to do some of the things you think are good ideas, and that they have been operating under a huge staff shortage due to years of a hiring freeze and budget cuts.
These sound like reasons to trust the CDC even less, is that what you meant?
While for me it is, indeed, a reason to put less weight on their analysis or expect less useful work/analysis to be done by them in a short/medium-term.
But I think this consideration, also, weakens certain types of arguments about the CDC’s lack of judgment/untrustworthiness. For example, arguments like “they did this, but should have done better” loses part of its bayesian weight as the organization likely made a lot of decisions under time pressure and other constraints. And things are more likely to go wrong if you’re under-stuffed and hence prioritize more aggressively.
I don’t expect to have a good judgment here, but it seems to me that “testing kits the CDC sent to local labs were unreliable” might fall here. It might have been a right call for them to distribute tests quickly and ~skip ensuring that tests didn’t have a false positive problem.
A better example: one might criticize CDC for lack of advice aimed at the vulnerable demographics. But absence might result not from lack of judgment but from political constraints. E.g. jimrandomh writes:
Addendum: A whistleblower claims that CDC wanted to advise elderly and fragile people to not fly on commercial airlines, but removed this advice at the White House’s direction.
Upd: this might be indicative of other negative characteristics of CDC (which might contribute to unreliability) but I don’t know enough about the US gov to asses it.
I’d change my mind about this post if:
1) I heard that you actually didn’t ignore unilateralist curse when preparing this and got outside feedback.
2) The claims were both correct and relevant to the CDC, (see my response to jimrandomh)
I’d change my mind about CDC if I were convince that these (or similar criticisms) were correct, as above, and were fair criticisms given the fact that you’re speaking post-hoc from an epistemically superior vantage point of having are more information than they did when they made their decisions. And remember that CDC is an organization with legal constraints that make them unable to do some of the things you think are good ideas, and that they have been operating under a huge staff shortage due to years of a hiring freeze and budget cuts.
These sound like reasons to trust the CDC even less, is that what you meant?
While for me it is, indeed, a reason to put less weight on their analysis or expect less useful work/analysis to be done by them in a short/medium-term.
But I think this consideration, also, weakens certain types of arguments about the CDC’s lack of judgment/untrustworthiness. For example, arguments like “they did this, but should have done better” loses part of its bayesian weight as the organization likely made a lot of decisions under time pressure and other constraints. And things are more likely to go wrong if you’re under-stuffed and hence prioritize more aggressively.
I don’t expect to have a good judgment here, but it seems to me that “testing kits the CDC sent to local labs were unreliable” might fall here. It might have been a right call for them to distribute tests quickly and ~skip ensuring that tests didn’t have a false positive problem.
A better example: one might criticize CDC for lack of advice aimed at the vulnerable demographics. But absence might result not from lack of judgment but from political constraints. E.g. jimrandomh writes:
Upd: this might be indicative of other negative characteristics of CDC (which might contribute to unreliability) but I don’t know enough about the US gov to asses it.