I can’t say I’m surprised, but:
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Almost looks like a time-lapse of colony-forming units of bacteria on a Petri dish.
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I may take this up to relieve my anxiety late at night during this crisis. I don’t have anything against it other than that it makes me cough and I feel dizzy the next day. But as for its analgesic properties, I am in favor. Maybe more people should, to make the world less tense while we figure out what the fuck to do with ourselves.
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Meanwhile, a second dispensary in Chicago has stopped recreational sales until further notice.
Wtf? Just when people could use some relief! Gaaaah
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Pssst: Try it in chocolate form. Or gummies.
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There’s an equilibrium effect, though. While big pharma wants a quick path to market, they also want an expensive barrier-to-entry. If they can get fast and expensive, that’s their sweet spot. That’s why they supported use fees; that’s how they keep competition out; that’s why they LOVE spending money on R&D and HATE spending money on already-approved drugs. The ratio of spending on R&D compared to compliance & process optimization is 100x or 1000x. And that might be an understatement.
To translate that into a more concrete example:
A big pharma company will spend $500k each on 100 instruments to speed up R&D, with another $100k/year in consumables per instrument. The same company will flinch about paying $10k on an instrument to reduce the contamination in their production line.
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Good. She’s got her hand right on his face, the rapey bastard.
Just hope she washes it after.
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I think it is under appreciated that this is what is missing from the CDC, because it’s not part of everyday life. The CDC is supposed to be the vehicle for creating that nimbleness by taking away the risk of individual organizations plotting a course of action. The way this is supposed to work in an emergency is that the CDC sends out orders (not guidelines) for hospitals to do A, B, and C. Because of lack of funding, personnel, and leadership, the CDC just hasn’t done that.
Without that mandate, the individual organizations have to figure out their plans by themselves and game out their risks, and they aren’t really well equipped for it, so they end up spending about the same time pondering a global pandemic as they do when they change the paint color for the hallways.
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Ahh, that’s the good stuff!
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You left out “willingness’” unfortunately. Adequate response to this early would have been politically inexpedient. When Trump put personal loyalty above competence, he set us up for this.
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“shelter in place” is everybody’s new favorite euphemism
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…until they are exposed for having a contaminated product…
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Truth! I left that implied, when I should have just stated it plainly.
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in bad economic times, sometimes the very last thing you want is to stick families in the same room together. 
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Sorry, I just haven’t seen that at all. Even after a known contamination problem, drug manufacturers are extremely reluctant to spend money on prevention. And when they do, they see it as a temporary deal until they get out from under increased surveillance. As soon as the oversight goes away, they go back to business-as-usual.
Note this is from the executive level. The rank-and-file QA folks work their respective asses off to prevent contamination. It’s just that they get little-to-no support in most companies.
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