1 I suppose it's one of the costs of living in a modern, wealthy society.  Between good infrastructure (clean water) and good healthcare (vaccines) we haven't had to deal with an actual communicable disease threat in a long time.  I suspect that even if the CDC had maintained its focus on communicable disease--and I agree that the branching out into other areas is silly--they'd still be out of practice.

2 Every year they talk about the possibility of a SARS outbreak or a replay of the 1918 epidemic.  Or some type of bio-weapon deployed against us.

Maybe the CDC has updated protocols in place to handle those and we just don't know it.  I'm skeptical that they do.

It's the job of the leadership to keep people *in* practice.

3

 It's the job of the leadership to keep people *in* practice.

I think the CDC is following the leadership, just like the leadership of the CDC is follow its' leadership - deny and minimize a problem and hope it goes away, while spending the time and money you were suppose to use on stated mission of the organization, in favor of your pet projects.

What is bordering on 'I have to laugh because otherwise I will cry' territory is the opposition to quarantine, travel bans, and otherwise routine measures against infectious diseases, reminds so much of the PRC's initial reaction to SARS, right down to accusing people who advocated those measures of racism.  Of course, that meant SARS spread and killed more people than it should have.  And all because the government in power did not want to have bad press about dealing with an infectious disease...

....Wait, which country are we talking about now?

 

4 Yeah, I know.

When I was a young officer, the mantra was "Remember Task Force Smith".

Since we were professionals, we listened and learned the lesson *that* way instead of in our soldiers' blood.

Bah.  I'm 55 and almost as cranky as our esteemed host.  Almost. 

5

An extremely public screwup like this has a tendency to light a fire under an organization, and they'll do a lot better next time.

Which is no consolation this time.

6  An extremely public screwup like this has a tendency to light a fire under an organization, and they'll do a lot better next time.

Which is no consolation this time.

Looks at VA before.  Looks at VA now.  Looks at overall leadership before, during, and after.

I do not see any consolation at least before 2017...

7

This is where a good executive makes a difference: he'll come down into a crisis situation like this, take some heads and kick some asses and get people moving.

Too bad we don't have one.

8

In 1978 I saw an extreme example of this. This was my first full-time job after college, as a junior engineer at Tektronix.

The HR group was notoriously useless and most managers got in the habit of working around them instead of with them. Top management finally got into the act: they fired everyone in the department, right up to the executive in charge.

Then they hired a new executive and gave him a mandate to build a new HR group from scratch, to not include anyone who had been in it before.

It took a while but after it was done the HR group did end up doing the job it was supposed to do, and line managers started working with it instead of around it.

Sometimes the only real answer is a serious house-cleaning. I wouldn't think they need to completely purge the CDC, but I do think at this point there's a case to be made for purging the top two or three levels of management.

9

Part of the problem with government positions and political appointees is that if the appointees have been loyal to you, it can be hard to get rid of them, even if it is a necessity.   Even better officials with expert managerial skills would have difficulty doing that - and then you have the current occupant in the big chair...

On the other hand, you can have the problem the current US military seems to have with relieving officers for cause - since such reliefs are career-enders, the chain of command is reluctant to do so unless they have no choice.  Making relief individually less damaging to an officer's career while making reliefs more common might be in the best interest of everyone.

...I would use the example of Task Force Smith more often, but that usually requires me to explain the lead-up to Task Force Smith, which is necessary for everyone except older military veterans and a few military history buffs.

10 That one's a rough one. There are good reasons for "up or out" - there's just not that many senior positions in the military (more than there should be, at that) and the lure of promotion is one of the more powerful tools in the military management box. If you clog up the system with a bunch of mediocrities, you lose the best part of your mid-level leadership.

As far as the CDC, well... I'm not sure our government still has the moral authority necessary to wield the kind of ruthlessness that it needs to handle this kind of disease. For epidemic control to actually work, you've got to be able to tell people "go there, even if you die" or "stay here, even if you die" (or "stay the hell out, even if you die", for that matter.) I don't know if Obama is capable of giving an order like that and enforcing it, especially to the extent that it's likely to be on his own constituents. I think he can mouth the words, but how do you enforce them? You can't really threaten an Ebola patient with anything short of immediate summary execution...

11

 That one's a rough one. There are good reasons for "up or out" - there's just not that many senior positions in the military (more than there should be, at that) and the lure of promotion is one of the more powerful tools in the military management box. If you clog up the system with a bunch of mediocrities, you lose the best part of your mid-level leadership.

That is part of the problem (And along with too many officers for the size of the military, are things I have my thoughts on.) but it also means that mediocre officers who should be relieved because they can not do the job properly are left in place for way too long.  Sometimes an officer needs more seasoning, or he/she is simply not fit for a particular role.  Refusing to relieve them because it would end their careers (Versus saying 'You are just not working out here.') is doing no one any good.

 

Regarding the CDC, if they can not or do not have the ability to act like a group of first responders and accomplish basic things like tracking and isolating everyone who had contact with Patient Zero as part of their first actions, then we have a major problem.  It becomes even more acute when the leadership can not even make an appearance of effort and concern.

At this point, even John Byng has done more than Tom Friedan, and we know how the former ended up...

12

"we haven't had to deal with an actual communicable disease threat in a long time"

AIDS/HIV in the '80s, and we utterly failed in controlling it due to PC, which is pretty clearly behind some of the worst problems with dealing with this outbreak in the US.

If/when Ebola breaks out in other parts of the 3rd World, well, history may well ask how we let a billion or more people die of it.