This is precisely what I was talking about with motivated reasoning and politics. The linked article directly refutes everything you said. Directly, and completely.

So you dig in and find something else to harp on... .shifting the goalposts.

You were wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. He posted a link that detailed exactly how you are wrong, and provides you with clues as to why you were wrong... You have been misled for partisan reasons. The article details several players in the misleading, and exactly what they have said that was misleading.

And instead of learning, you choose to pick at an irrelevant thread.

They eliminated a group that sat in cabinet meetings week after week doing exactly nothing but wasting their time. And then when they were needed, the professionals at the CDC are suddenly right where they need to be with the highest access. There are exactly zero people in the loop running things that are saying "if only someone had been in the cabinet meeting on January 4th!"

The CDC has gotten everything they asked for and more. The democrats have been able to weigh in and add even more to the even more that the Trump administration added on. Everyone involved gets to say "I'm the one who saved the day!"

And still we have partisan hacks running around looking for tiny nits to pick and ways to spin things to political advantage. There is really something deeply wrong with people.

You are clearly not stupid, nor are you inexperienced or uniformed. You are bright, old and experienced and you have a degree of knowledge on many things.
  This is what is disheartening. Scary even. There is some feature of the human animal that makes partisanship more attractive than doing the right thing.

I suppose it is the same thing that motivates sports fans to always think the referees are against their team. But when played out it large groups it leads to dangerous situations.

This is actually not a terrible solution.

It won't help all those restaurants that get shut down for 2 months and can't pay their bills, but it will keep people having food to eat and maybe a roof over their heads.

It certainly beats coming up with some complicated bureaucratic system with tons of overhead.

Everything about your comment is wrong. The question was based on a deliberate misrepresentation of Fauci's comments at the hearing. Fauci said so himself, many times. Fauci was talking about the design of the testing regime not being for containment of an epidemic, but for monitoring. This is not new, as Fauci repeatedly said.

What is new is that the healthcare professionals decided that this should be changed to fit the current situation, and it was changed.

There is no partisan angle here. Pretending that this quote is Trump refusing to take leadership or responsibility is a stupid and partisan lie. In that very press conference Fauci detailed exactly how the "failure" testing regime had been changed (with Trump's approval) to fit this epidemic's needs. So not only did he not abdicate responsibility, he made the needed changes. Fauci was clear about all of this from the start. And the politicians were clear about it from the start - harping on him to use the word failure for a pull quote. There is no chance that any of those people understood him to mean that "Trump failed" to address the situation. In fact, he detailed exactly how and why things had been changed before the hearing happened.

None of this is to say that Trump demonstrated great leadership in making these changes either. All he did was say OK when they said "we need to do this". He clearly has no knowledge of virology or epidemiology. This is equally true for every president in my lifetime. They all depend on the professionals at the CDC to figure out what to do. The only thing he could possibly do right is remove the obstacles in their way, and it seems like that is what is being done. Beyond that, it is on the career folks at CDC and politicians at the local level to get their part right. (and even if they do, there is no guarantee that things won't get really ugly. They are not omniscient after all.)

People are stupid and malicious in their thinking when politics is in the mix. Every single syllable of your post is more evidence of this. There is nothing dumber than the deliberate misrepresentation of a deliberately partisan question.

This is stupid. The question was stupid and purely political. It is not a "good point", it is a stupid talking point based in a lie.

Fauci was very clear in what he was talking about. It was not about a failure of "getting tests" or "testing" or of Trump.

The failure was of the design of the CDC testing regime. And not "failure" in that it was badly designed, but in that "it was not designed for this situation". This is not a Trump creation. (nor is it an Obama or Bush or Clinton creation). Fauci has explained this many times before the question was asked. He even said "as I have told you many times" in the press conference.

The Trump administration actually radically changed these procedures two weeks ago. I sincerely doubt that Trump had anything to do with it other than saying "OK". Fauci made it clear that this is something that he wanted to do for a long time. So I'd guess that he's the dude who came up with it. Fauci is not a Trump guy - he's been there forever.

I know most people would rather play political "gotcha" than think clearly and participate in a public dialog about real issues of governance (as rsilvergun clearly demonstrates below), but it really isn't useful. It only makes us less than we were.

Plus, Trump screws up enough on his own. You really don't need to invent BS talking points like this. He doesn't take responsibility for the testing regime being a bad fit because is he not factually responsible for it, and also when the epidemiology professionals at the CDC said "we want to change this", he immediately said yes and it was changed. That's pretty much the opposite of the intent of this quote. This is among the things that he did right. (letting the career professionals like Fauci do their job without being encumbered by micromanagement or bureaucracy)

this is not true.

It is caused by an infection with Borrelia bacteria. They are susceptible to common antibiotics. Even amoxicillin will kill it.

It is sometimes missed or misdiagnosed - but there is an entire industry of charlatans who have invented a non-specific syndrome that requires lifetime treatments. This syndrome is a close cousin of the 90's Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

For those who are not up on the topic, don't listen to internet testimonials on this sort of subject. There have been clinical trials that have been fairly conclusive that this syndrome does not exist as described. (although people can be infected long term and this can cause problems)

Here's a nice writeup, which makes the point that this is a fake diagnosis, not a fake disease.

That's just wrong. The trash in the Pacific is not American post-consumer trash. It is Chinese consumer trash... .they don't have the sanitation systems we do. This has been widely covered in environmental publications studying the problem, and those studies have trickled into the scientific press. All the nerds here should be relatively aware of that.

Western recyclables don't even go to China any more. They banned the import of the stuff to force their recycling companies to develop a domestic supply chain in order to address their trash problem.

I get that some people love to blame their own society - it is the only place we can really change, after all. But this one is just dumb. Nobody pays a ton of money to import big bales of plastic from overseas and then just dumps it in the ocean. If you paused for even two seconds to think about it you'd realize that the entire scenario makes no sense.

But some dude who works in the Apple factory dropping his drink bottle in the ditch on the way home? Yeah, that makes sense. That's what we did here before the big push in the 60's and 70's to get that cleaned up.

Why would they have to do something other than dump it in a landfill? Why is that a hard requirement?

In big cities in China it is not uncommon for stuff to be dropped in a ditch or dumped in a local ravine. They just don't have the sanitation infrastructure we have here. That's the stuff that is ending up in the Pacific.

Why in the world would you issue such a silly edict? "Sure, you might be allowed to pick up that garbage before it gets in the ocean.... But don't you dare throw it in a landfill!!!"

A landfill is exactly where this stuff belongs. If there's a way to get the recyclables out in a cost effective way, then great.... but the problem isn't "we don't recycle enough of the garbage we pick up from the middle of the river."

You've got the entire thing backwards.

This solution in itself is kinda dumb, because it says "keep throwing your garbage on the ground, we'll go pick it up for you" instead of having campaigns to encourage people to throw the trash in a proper receptacle that is going to be properly disposed of. That's what they don't do over there. You fix that and you can tackle recycling at the source, just like everyone else does. That's a much better place to focus cleanup efforts - and we know it works.

But bitching about what they do with the trash that they pick up from the river? Come on, man! I know this is nerd heaven where everyone nitpicks other people's good ideas, but that's just ridiculous.

I'll echo everything Alwin said. In the US and Europe, over 98% of garbage ends up in properly run landfills. In China that number is closer to 40-60%, depending.

China is already addressing the issue of recycling by heavily restricting the import of recyclables. They are doing this to force their recycling businesses to develop an internal mechanism for collecting recyclables. They want that 60% of waste that is getting tossed in a ditch to get picked up and sold to a plastic recycling center.

So, just like their industrial air and water pollution, they are late to the party, but they are beginning to address it. Unfortunately in this case it is creating issues for western recycling - prices for recyclables are pretty low without a market in China. Prices are on the order of 10% of what they were 2 years ago. Maybe too low to make it worth hauling the stuff, although some high-grade plastics have recovered a bit, so maybe we are developing our own recycling infrastructure.

I am in South Florida. Our county has a Stem coordinator that handles all of the programs at the various schools in Broward County.

If you have no affiliation, that person or equivalent in your school district would probably be the best place to start. Or the local community college. Our community college system is tied in to the public schools with crossover courses - our high schools have a program where seniors can graduate with their high school degree and their associates degree at the same time. I'd bet that they have lots of programs that would be great for your expertise and surplus equipment.

I was shocked to see what they are working on at the top magnet high schools. The Henderson School is a part of Florida Atlantic University - it is sort of an experimental school for trying out educational ideas for elementary and secondary schools. I've been trying to get my kids in there since they were old enough - it is a lottery - and no luck. The stuff they are doing is amazing. I've worked with their STEM guys on a few projects and they are fantastic. There's probably programs like that around the country.

I take all of the above to account. I think most people do.

And we all weigh them differently. If you are living on the edge, price might be the only thing that matters, particularly if you are also very young and haven't been burned.

Amazon isn't the best, most reliable retailer I've ever dealt with. The biggest brick and mortar places have to hold that crown... they all take pretty much any return, no questions asked. And they are usually very price competitive at the same time.

Ebay retailers are at the other end of what I'll accept. Sometimes that's where what I'm looking for is - and I'll buy it, even though there are lots of corrupt dealers on that platform.

Amazon is pretty high quality - and yet there are loads of knock-offs and outright scams as well, But it seems to me that this is getting better over time. We'll see.

I've tried the pickup shopping service at Walmart a couple of times - it is a pretty excellent experience. If Amazon could meld their unmatched breadth of products with that level of service - well, they'd have all of the business, I suppose.

I'm not saying any of them are perfect. But in my personal experience, Amazon has backed the customer when problems arise. That may not be reality for everyone, but it doesn't seem to be enough of a problem to have derailed them. Our neighborhood is crawling with big grey Mercedes Amazon vans, bringing packages to my neighbors. They are more ubiquitous than UPS trucks these days.

So I'd say that in my immediate area, people are finding the balance at Amazon to be attractive. My area is richer and more urban than average though, so maybe that skews things. We also are in a "same day delivery" zone, which makes them even more of a no-brainer for those items. If you are busy and traffic is tough, Amazon can be quicker than running to the specialty store across town. (Actual experience from last week - I needed a part for my dryer after it broke at about 6pm. Amazon got it to me the next morning by 10:30 am. I couldn't even check to see if the local store had it in stock until they opened at 10am, and they are a good 45 minute drive in traffic. - of course, that story also cuts both ways. There used to be more appliance parts stores nearby before internet competition ran them out of business. My local store is also an online retailer. But they can't compete on price. Not with the biggest online suppliers. The last time I used them they were $125 for a part that was $79 online. I paid for the immediate access, vs waiting a week. But obviously most people are deciding that one differently too.)

Ouch... been there, done that. I too have resorted to writing a one-off parser rather than rely on the MS GUI for large (wide) imports.

Painful memories there.... like the inclusion of special characters that the MS parser didn't expect - months down the road. Daily imports of thousands of records, and we took months to hit a weird edge case where special characters made it into a text field and screwed up the rest of the line. And it took a few days for anyone to notice....

Feel my pain, people. Feel my pain! Hunting down days-old dependencies on a "what happened to this record" across multiple systems... when multi-million dollar contracts are on the line. Thanks, Bank of New York, for having your specification so well documented and so strictly adhered to! /sarc...

This is the only intelligent response here.

That article is extremely weak sauce, and in fact points in quite the opposite direction of the click bait headlines and pile-on responses.

If it comes up again check with local high school and college programs. I'm sure someone would love to get their hands on that sort of stuff for educational projects.

I run a robotics team at a local elementary school and we are always strapped for time/money/materials.

I've been intending to do a separate group to work on analog robots, but time and a supply of appropriate parts are limiting factors. A box of FPGA chips would be lost on me, but I know of at least a couple of high school programs that could make really good use of them. (one is building autonomous driving RC sized race cars, and another is building a full-sized Le Mans electric race car from the ground up.)

So if you have the resources and time, a good place to invest them would be with a local school.

That does not match my experience with Amazon. They have always stood behind their sale with me - even when I've had issues with 3rd party vendors. I had a crappy and probably counterfeit set of earbuds show up - they refunded my money without complaint. The same goes for a battery that wasn't as described.

I've never ordered food, so I can't speak directly to the topic at hand, but I'd bet they are as good as anyone else, if not better. Their supply chain and fulfillment is their differentiating factor - similar to Walmart in that regard. Buying online can sometimes be a crap shoot because you can't inspect the item before taking possession, but they do it as well as anyone.

I would be willing to bet that the largest retailers are much better with expiration dates on food than the smaller ones. Amazon should be pretty damned good, as should Publix, Walmart, Kroger, Ralph's, etc. They move a huge volume of product, ensuring that stuff doesn't sit around so long. Their supply chains are also quite tight - so they don't have 3 months worth of cereal sitting in warehouses.

Compare with a small corner grocery in the city. That can of condensed cream of mushroom soup might have been sitting there for 3 years waiting for a buyer who is making a casserole to drop by.

Amazon and Walmart should be best positioned to eliminate this issue entirely. Their supply chain management is beyond anything even dreamed of a couple of decades ago - and as another poster suggested above, machine readable data on expiration dates and other info is probably just on the horizon as we type.