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Location: At the dude ranch / above the sea Gender:
Posted:
May 11, 2026 - 1:02pm
ednazarko wrote:
I was in Health and Human Services when COVID hit. I was tech lead on a few normal-ish development projects, but as the first few hints of COVID's contagiousness started to show, I got pulled onto a team to build a system to track test results and hospitalizations. Took three weeks for the first version, and it became the data foundation for a multi-agency COVID team, about 120 people (as high as 600 or more from time to time) with the range of specific skills needed who were detailed to the org for 3-6 month stints (stress levels were very high so rotating in and out seemed important, and the skills we needed changed a lot) from all over government. Virologists, stats wonks, logistics wizards from the Army, chemists, doctors, super-computer jockeys, AI researchers, and a whole lot of techies on my team, mostly contractors (fed government made a decision years ago to outsource tech expertise.) I was co-lead on data acquisition and system management with detailees from CDC and was one of about 20 or so in the org who weren't short term detailees. That system grew into tracking ventilators (not just utilization but who on a vent was for COVID versus something else), PPE inventories (we could tell you what size gloves some hospital in a small Idaho town needed), deaths, then mobile morgue trucks, conversion of parking lots into ICUs, etc. Every COVID test result, several hundred data elements twice a day from every hospital in the country. We got similar data from a large number of countries, along with a shared pool of deidentified patient data because it was clear the medical experts were struggling to understand the disease and progression. We got data from the PPE industry pipeline, from manufacturing of the fabrics through which container on which ship they were on, order tracking (partial fill rates, out of stock, etc). Ports data (let's get that one ship out of the 278 idling off of LA to skip the line into port because there are two containers with PPE). Then when a vaccine was in sight we tracked from creation of the precursors through bottling and shipping and into arms. We made public every data element we could, thousands of downloads a day. By the time I rolled off the specialty team I'd watched over 900,000 people die (on my computer screen). It took a toll.
I share all that to make it clear I've got some pretty decent pandemic experience. And we will be in deep, deep trouble if the hantavirus has developed new tricks. I sat in meetings where political leaders said we should stop testing for COVID because then we'd have less cases to report and the president wouldn't look so bad. That we should delete the testing data because it was making the president look bad. That we should only send vaccines to red states. We fought hard against never ending pop-ups of politicals who tried to suppress data, or wanted to spin it to say COVID wasn't real and that nobody was dying - even at the point where over a half million people had died.
I can tell you with certainty that almost no one who served on that specialized COVID team is currently employed by the government. None of that expertise and experience remains - but the crazy politicals are back in positions of power. When the mass firings started after the inauguration, it became clear that if we had another pandemic it was gonna BE LIT, because expertise was purged while political obedience was promoted. HHS has deleted petabytes of vaccine research and virus research data because it supported POVs that HHS' current leadership doesn't agree with. (Which fortunately for all of us citizens was rescued and archived safely in two different locations before the databases were wiped. Data rescues are happening with all the hundreds of datasets that this administration is deleting. Whole 'nother topic...) Ignorance is more highly valued than inconvenient data.
In a press conference the president just said about hantavirus EXACTLY the same words he said about COVID when we only had a few deaths. Watch the videos. I saw video this morning of people being evac'd off the cruise ship, and it looked exactly like what we saw with COVID and cruise ships right down to greeters in head to toe PPE and the isolation flights to the Nebraska specialty hospital. What made COVID so insanely capable was that it had an incubation period of about 10 days during which someone infected was contagious without symptoms. Hantavirus has an incubation period of at least a week, sometimes as long as 10 weeks, with symptoms not showing up for at least a week, sometimes more. But it's generally not human to human transmitted. If it's developed new skills - and FYI one hantavirus variant in Argentina has learned human to human transmission, see New England Journal of Medicine study, and that's where the cruise ship was before the cases showed up on board - we are in for a wild ride.
I was there at the beginning of AIDS in the CA Bay Area. I used to get the MMWR (Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report) that started by running headlines like âYoung men developing rare skin cancersâ. It was first called GRID, as in âGay Related Immunity Disease.â We literally could not write the diagnosis in the medical record, so came up with code phrases (âthis 26 year old homosexual man has developed Mycobacterium Aviumâ¦â) instead of being able to tell the truth. Was that medical? No. Political. All that fear and censorship and judgemental attitude (âthose homos deserve it!â) were such stumbling blocks to understanding and treating it. I sat in the basement of our hospital with a young man as he slipped into a coma listening to a tape Iâd made for him of the latest Paul Simon album. When I noticed his ventilator exhaust was blowing in my face I went home certain that I was going to die. Was it airborne? We didn't really know - because we weren't allowed to talk about it...
The clandestine and political and frustrating approach to COVID reminded me of that, and youâre confirming it. Thanks for such a solid post.
Iâm sure we were also thwarted by intentional (probably Russian) disinformation in social media. Did you run into that at all?
Folks that arenât aware, hereâs a very accurate scene from back in those early HIV days. the Randy Shilts book âAnd the Band Played Onâ is a history of that horrible period that we seem to be repeating yet again.
Director of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya
TL;DR: "My plan is chaos!"
I was in Health and Human Services when COVID hit. I was tech lead on a few normal-ish development projects, but as the first few hints of COVID's contagiousness started to show, I got pulled onto a team to build a system to track test results and hospitalizations. Took three weeks for the first version, and it became the data foundation for a multi-agency COVID team, about 120 people (as high as 600 or more from time to time) with the range of specific skills needed who were detailed to the org for 3-6 month stints (stress levels were very high so rotating in and out seemed important, and the skills we needed changed a lot) from all over government. Virologists, stats wonks, logistics wizards from the Army, chemists, doctors, super-computer jockeys, AI researchers, and a whole lot of techies on my team, mostly contractors (fed government made a decision years ago to outsource tech expertise.) I was co-lead on data acquisition and system management with detailees from CDC and was one of about 20 or so in the org who weren't short term detailees. That system grew into tracking ventilators (not just utilization but who on a vent was for COVID versus something else), PPE inventories (we could tell you what size gloves some hospital in a small Idaho town needed), deaths, then mobile morgue trucks, conversion of parking lots into ICUs, etc. Every COVID test result, several hundred data elements twice a day from every hospital in the country. We got similar data from a large number of countries, along with a shared pool of deidentified patient data because it was clear the medical experts were struggling to understand the disease and progression. We got data from the PPE industry pipeline, from manufacturing of the fabrics through which container on which ship they were on, order tracking (partial fill rates, out of stock, etc). Ports data (let's get that one ship out of the 278 idling off of LA to skip the line into port because there are two containers with PPE). Then when a vaccine was in sight we tracked from creation of the precursors through bottling and shipping and into arms. We made public every data element we could, thousands of downloads a day. By the time I rolled off the specialty team I'd watched over 900,000 people die (on my computer screen). It took a toll.
I share all that to make it clear I've got some pretty decent pandemic experience. And we will be in deep, deep trouble if the hantavirus has developed new tricks. I sat in meetings where political leaders said we should stop testing for COVID because then we'd have less cases to report and the president wouldn't look so bad. That we should delete the testing data because it was making the president look bad. That we should only send vaccines to red states. We fought hard against never ending pop-ups of politicals who tried to suppress data, or wanted to spin it to say COVID wasn't real and that nobody was dying - even at the point where over a half million people had died.
I can tell you with certainty that almost no one who served on that specialized COVID team is currently employed by the government. None of that expertise and experience remains - but the crazy politicals are back in positions of power. When the mass firings started after the inauguration, it became clear that if we had another pandemic it was gonna BE LIT, because expertise was purged while political obedience was promoted. HHS has deleted petabytes of vaccine research and virus research data because it supported POVs that HHS' current leadership doesn't agree with. (Which fortunately for all of us citizens was rescued and archived safely in two different locations before the databases were wiped. Data rescues are happening with all the hundreds of datasets that this administration is deleting. Whole 'nother topic...) Ignorance is more highly valued than inconvenient data.
In a press conference the president just said about hantavirus EXACTLY the same words he said about COVID when we only had a few deaths. Watch the videos. I saw video this morning of people being evac'd off the cruise ship, and it looked exactly like what we saw with COVID and cruise ships right down to greeters in head to toe PPE and the isolation flights to the Nebraska specialty hospital. What made COVID so insanely capable was that it had an incubation period of about 10 days during which someone infected was contagious without symptoms. Hantavirus has an incubation period of at least a week, sometimes as long as 10 weeks, with symptoms not showing up for at least a week, sometimes more. But it's generally not human to human transmitted. If it's developed new skills - and FYI one hantavirus variant in Argentina has learned human to human transmission, see New England Journal of Medicine study, and that's where the cruise ship was before the cases showed up on board - we are in for a wild ride.
Surgery yesterday went well. Iâm home, resting and doing amazing.
That's great. It's sort of amazing how good "replacement" surgery is now... hips, knees... I know a lot of people with multiple "new parts"...and the recovery times and activity levels afterward have them asking "why did I put that off".
Location: At the dude ranch / above the sea Gender:
Posted:
Apr 2, 2026 - 9:51am
Red_Dragon wrote:
How fun. Waited three months already to see a dermatologist about some highly suspect skin issues. Appointment was tomorrow, this morning they call me to reschedule. Thank you, red state, for making Derplahoma a place where professionals have no desire to practice.
How fun. Waited three months already to see a dermatologist about some highly suspect skin issues. Appointment was tomorrow, this morning they call me to reschedule. Thank you, red state, for making Derplahoma a place where professionals have no desire to practice.
Great news...Wishing you a speedy recovery.
