News coverage of this crisis is typical: wall-to-wall reporting of a small number of facts over and over again, giant gaps in reporting of fundamental problems and issues. My primary news source is Washington Post, also New York Times, Vox, NPR, The Intercept, ProPublica, occasionally the Washington Examiner and (to see what they’re up to) Fox. Here are some crucial parts of the story I think they are missing. Readers (if any): Please contribute other unasked questions if you have them. Or answers!
- Mentioned daily: Shortages of critical medical supplies.
Unasked questions: Who makes surgical masks? Who makes N95 masks? Where do they make them? What does it take to make more of them? Are they doing that? Ventilators – same questions. Other items – same questions.
2. Mentioned daily: Impending inadequacy of medical infrastructure such as hospitals and ICU beds.
Unasked questions: How specialized are the needed facilities? Can underused facilities like hotels be repurposed to temporarily take their place? If so, is that being done? Can we build necessary structures quickly like the Chinese supposedly did?
3. Mentioned daily: Impending overwhelming of medical personnel.
Unasked questions: How much can unskilled labor help? Can a useful amount of emergency training be accomplished in a few weeks? If so, is anyone trying to do this? If they aren’t, why aren’t they?
4. Mentioned daily: Impending unemployment crisis.
Unasked question: Can some of the people whose jobs are at risk be re-employed to help solve the problems of undercapacity mentioned in the first few items?
5. Mentioned daily: Inadequate response of the federal government – part I.
Unasked questions: There is a whole professional community who has been worrying about just this emergency for decades. Where are they? Are there things they have been calling for that we are not doing? I have done some internet searching for pre-2019 writing – I found lots of mentions of social distancing but not much else. Didn’t anyone foresee the capacity problems we are now facing? If so, what did they say we should do about it? Ditto for the economic crisis accompanying the health crisis.
It is easy to believe that the incompetence of the Trump administration has crippled the response of the government. Certainly the president’s performance in public has hurt more than helped. But the main failing pointed to in the press has been technical problems with the screening test, which I have not seen linked to political interference. I would also expect that if there is anything that professionals in CDC and other agencies are being prevented from doing, someone in the agency would leak it to the press in order to build pressure for action. I haven’t seen much of that.
6. Mentioned daily: relative underperformance of the federal government compared to South Korea, China, etc.
Unanswered question: How is it doing compared to Europe, Australia, and Canada? After all, they can’t blame Trump for their growing crises.