COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US)

JimEverett said
I get the criticism on the testing and the failure to lockdown travelers from Korea and Italy at a minimum - but is the idea that governors and mayors are somehow shielded from public health information? If there was so much clarity as you are saying there was then where is the criticism for Governors and Mayors who apparently ignored the threat until we are where we are.
I mean it seems weird that some rural county in Tennessee should be put in lockdown - which is why some sort of national response in that sense seems highly unusual to me. But the Governor of NY and the Mayor of NYC? If the goal here is to assign blame to politicians it seems like there is plenty to go around in terms of why certain places are where they are at.

Structurally, the hub of any US epidemic response is the CDC - for reasons that include resources, expertise, and the backing of the federal government, which can operate across state lines, at arrival/import locations, and internationally. States (and major cities) typically follow CDC’s lead and issued guidance - and the CDC is an executive agency under the authority of the White House, as you know. And in the response, early action is critical - and viruses will move freely across international and state borders . . . all of which positions the federal government at the head of any US response.

I don’t think your point is misplaced and there’s plenty of criticism to go around. Out of them all, it seems like Inslee has been the most effective and responsible - what Washington state has done, largely on their own after scrambling from behind, looks like a success story.

But given how these things arrive and develop, we should expect the federal to lead to response - I think that’s just about fundamental. And just look at the messaging from the president on this from January (I think he was first asked about it at Davos) through today - it’s a mess. It’s no surprise that the executive agencies he leads would be similarly messy over all of this.