The CDC, and the entire federal public health apparatus in the United States, has been an absolute disaster for the entire duration of this pandemic. It's embarrassing how incompetent they are. A pandemic is an emergency and requires proactive action. The CDC has been anything but proactive. As stated in the article, it seems as if they're reacting to every event that occurs with a month-long delay.
Data Collection--It's an absolute disgrace that there is no federal central repository of COVID-19 breakthrough infection data. We are navigating this mess completely blindfolded. Instead, we have to rely on individual state reporting, and sometimes data is only available on a county-level.
Wide-scale Home Testing--It took the FDA an entire year and a half to approve a lateral assay antigen test. Yet, they're on retail for $20 at CVS. That's far too expensive for a simple piece of nitrocellulose paper with immunofluorescent antibodies. If we were serious about curtailing the spread of Delta, we would invest funds in a federal effort to mass-produce these tests at a $1 price point, and distribute them to all households for daily testing.
Mutations--It seems as if everyone forgot the concept of a "derivative" from entry-level calculus. Everyone is focused on Delta without exerting the slightest effort in thinking about the future. We need to get proactive, folks. Immune evasion to Delta may be low, but what about future variants? We need to model the rate of mutations in the spike protein based on the magnitude of transmissions. This is possible if effort is put into it. Doing such, we can forecast antibody evasion in future variants based on current cases.
Booster Doses--I truly hope that the boosters that are being planned are not simply a third dose of the same Spike encodement. The spike region has mutated since the Alpha iteration of the virus. Current vaccines encode for that old version of the Spike protein. The boosters should have the mRNA encoding of the Delta spike. Giving senior citizens a booster of the old Spike sequence would be extremely short-sighted.
Treatments--Why is the United States investing so little in COVID-19 infection treatment? Why are we hedging all our bets on prophylaxis? We must invest far more into Coronavirus inhibitors.
In short, I have lost all faith in our federal public health apparatus. The CDC is nowhere near as agile as it needs to be to deal with a pandemic.
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