Originally Posted by
BrunswickDawg
I'm sure a number of y'all will blast this -
But what articles like that show is the ill effects of long term funding and leadership issues within government agencies. Instead of being able to quickly adjust and manage data, Florida is having to rely on hand tallys? That's insane.
Georgia certainly hasn't kept up public health funding, but even we aren't doing hand tallys in the line.
My wife and son were tested the last week in June, when the wave started hitting here. They had drive thru testing at the Health Dept. After about 90 minutes waiting, they got about 10 cars back. Each of them was given a form with a QR code, and a matching QR code sticker. When the sample was taken, the QR code sticker was put on the sample, and the form was taken. So, if they had left the line, no one else's info would be used. Last week, my son was tested again (insurance requirements by his summer job), and the Health Department now has you register on-line for an assigned time, sends you the QR code via e-mail, your print it, when you show up they scan it, and then print a label for the test sample. Yeah, there is room for error - but nothing like what that article describes.
So back to the first point - when you starve government agencies so that basics like data management are not modernized, and you install political leadership in those agencies - you get Florida. Or, New Jersey, who's Unemployment data management is so old they had no one who knew COBOL on staff to be able re-program changes. And no, I'm not calling for outrageous liberal tax and spend policies to cure our ills. But, if you spend 40 years preaching against government spending, while putting pet projects and wars on credit cards and not maintaining basic services, you guarantee certain results - and a lot of what we are seeing going right now is a reflection of that.