My impression is that he is doing a good job and deserves Trump’s support. Unless I am mistaken, he is not responsible for the spectacular failure in testing rollout. Whoever is should be fired immediately and very publicly. Plus those that think government-knows-best and held tight centralized control of testing—fire them, too.
Unless I am mistaken, he is not responsible for the spectacular failure in testing rollout. Whoever is should be fired immediately and very publicly.
As I understand, the original issue came up because the initial test developed did not meet FDA standards for reliability, so the CDC developed their own.
The test the CDC developed worked, but was overly complicated, and some samples appear to have been contaminated. One of the parts that made the test over-complicated was a test to rule out false positives from contamination. Reportedly there were 12 labs with the necessary expertise to execute these tests reliably.
When the emergency was declared by President Trump at the end of January, Obama-era regulations were invoked which legally barred any locally created tests from being used without FDA approval. That process would have taken at least several months to yield any test.
Per regulation, local labs were being told they were not to be using unproven (to the FDA) tests, and to stop.
Some local testing was carried out in defiance of the regulations (Seattle?), and on Feb 24th, the lab association formally requested a waiver from the FDA. Initially, the FDA resisted as there was no provision for a waiver, but on Feb 26th it percolated up and the FDA announced that regardless, they would not be prosecuting.
Only at that point could new tests begin mass production process.
It’s a stupid bureaucracy, and it appears (stupid) rules were followed. The fallout is political, not legal or likely even administrative. It’s one reason overly large and reaching bureaucracies are a bad idea, and while they can help in the beginning they bring misery in the long run as unexpected events always happen and opportunities for improvement are lost.