The Rose Garden and White House happenings: Listening to voters’ concerns
ridski said:
Politics aside, I hope you’ve got your shots, or have an appointment lined up. Ocean County seems to be running much better then neighboring Monmouth (where my in-laws live) for these things.
Happy to say I am getting my second shot on Tuesday! Thanks for asking.
Today’s Times has a distressing story about the various contractors hired to set up the appointment process online. Many failed or had serious mechanical issues, adding to the chaotic mix of those with little knowledge of computers trying to register, and equipment which was faulty.
mtierney said:
ml1 said:
I believe that was actually true. But it was almost exclusively GOP governors raising those objections.
Thank you. I remember also the competing governors of New York and New Jersey holding press conferences almost daily (I believe Murphy is still on two or three times a week). I guess I have gotten cynical in my old age, but as Washington was the focus during the early months of 2020, as reality set in on the pandemic — in an election year to boot — political competitions were inevitable.
Nothing about governors holding press conferences to talk about the situations in their states provides any support for the claim that states objected to Federal involvement in vaccinating people in their states. In fact, it's stupid to even suggest a connection between them.
mtierney said:
I totally agree that distribution was/still is totally messed up and caused needless extra anxiety to an already scared public. Whether or not the reasons to allow states to manage getting the vaccine out were the cause, it is too early to judge, but it’s appears that is probably the case. I also remember the objections raised to submitting to Washington dictates last year by governors who claimed to know their populations, etc., best.
This was mt's original claim about governors. I responded that she imagined it.
I called for examples. daveschmidt tried but swung and missed.
What she claimed simply did not happen. The reason that it didn't happen is because under Trump, there were no "Washington dictates" of any weight that were put forth. His whole policy was predicated on letting the states do what they wanted - then taking credit for success and blaming it on the states for failure.
Don't mean to obsess on this, but let's not rewrite history.
There were just too many cooks to spoil the broth...and, as earlier noted, too many tech companies creating complex application programs which couldn’t handle the demand.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/18/world/covid-coronavirus
mtierney said:
There were just too many cooks to spoil the broth...and, as earlier noted, too many tech companies creating complex application programs which couldn’t handle the demand.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/18/world/covid-coronavirus
um, yeah.
that's what everyone has been saying to you. Without leadership at the top, it was a free-for-all. There are still inefficiencies as a result of the multitude of scheduling systems. But we're up to 2 million vaccines a day, and looking at herd immunity by summer. Something we couldn't foresee even a month ago. So maybe just be happy that things are now finally moving in the right direction after the malignant narcissist left the national stage. Of course the one thing that could screw this up is the 50% of Republican men who say they won't be vaccinated. 
49 percent of GOP men say they won't get vaccinated: PBS poll
let's hope that they are now just trying to own the libs with their survey responses, and when the time comes they'll actually be vaccinated.
drummerboy said:
I called for examples. daveschmidt tried but swung and missed.
Now I know what it means to check a swing.
mtierney said:
ridski said:
Politics aside, I hope you’ve got your shots, or have an appointment lined up. Ocean County seems to be running much better then neighboring Monmouth (where my in-laws live) for these things.
Happy to say I am getting my second shot on Tuesday! Thanks for asking.
Today’s Times has a distressing story about the various contractors hired to set up the appointment process online. Many failed or had serious mechanical issues, adding to the chaotic mix of those with little knowledge of computers trying to register, and equipment which was faulty.
do you have a link for this story? I can't seem to find it.
(The Times has the worst search function ever.)
ETA - never mind. found it.
well, I hate to bring up Trump again, but this was another failure of his pandemic response.
There should have been ONE website for scheduling vaccinations, managed by the Federal govt. The states should have been only responsible for entering data to customize it. i.e. locations, screening requirements for vaccinees, etc.
Of course, this would have also required the Feds to put together a comprehensive vaccination rollout plan - which they did not do.
Meanwhile Trump is demanding credit for a job well done.
mtierney said:
Here it is...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/technology/vaccine-sites-technology-problems-covid.html
drummerboy said:
There should have been ONE website for scheduling vaccinations, managed by the Federal govt.
The research ends at 2012, leaving eight more years for advances and lessons learned (including from Healthcare.gov itself), but from Computerworld (10/21/2013):
WASHINGTON -- A majority of large IT projects fail to meet deadlines, are over budget and don't make their users happy. Such is the case with Healthcare.gov.
The U.S. is now racing to fix Healthcare.gov, the Affordability Care Act (ACA) website that launched Oct 1, by bringing in new expertise to fix it. Healthcare.gov's problems include site availability due to excessive loads, incorrect data recording among other things.
President Barack Obama said Monday that there is "no excuse" for the problems at the site. But his IT advisors shouldn't be surprised -- the success rate for large, multi-million dollar commercial and government IT projects is very low.
The Standish Group, which has a database of some 50,000 development projects, looked at the outcomes of multimillion dollar development projects and ran the numbers for Computerworld.
Of 3,555 projects from 2003 to 2012 that had labor costs of at least $10 million, only 6.4% were successful. The Standish data showed that 52% of the large projects were "challenged," meaning they were over budget, behind schedule or didn't meet user expectations. The remaining 41.4% were failures -- they were either abandoned or started anew from scratch.
"They didn't have a chance in hell," said Jim Johnson, founder and chairman of Standish, of Healthcare.gov. "There was no way they were going to get this right - they only had a 6% chance," he said.
a scheduling app doesn't come close to healthcare.gov in terms of complexity.
anyway, do you think it's better to have one project that might take too long and fail to work initially, or ten?
drummerboy said:
anyway, do you think it's better to have one project that might take too long and fail to work initially, or ten?
It depends. How many hundreds of millions of Americans are affected by the 10?
drummerboy said:
all of them.
Minus at least one. Whatever software Essex County is using went smoothly for me.
If you could guarantee that federal software would be working just as well now, that’s an easy answer. Otherwise, one advantage of the fragmented approach is that flaws in a single system don’t create a nationwide bottleneck.
The Essex County software was crap. As has been testified to many times over in other threads. Looked like it was put together by a high schooler working on their first project.
You sound committed to your position. Yet again I welcome you to pay no mind to me, either to the information I posted or my answer to your question.
I didn't find the information you posted particularly pertinent to the question at hand. A scheduling application does not fall into the area of "large IT projects". It's almost trivial compared to healthcare.gov.
Your data point of one regarding Essex county is exactly that, and is overwhelmed by more data from MOL alone. Plus my eyes.
(just as a point of info: I've got a masters in comp sci and 38 years in the IT biz. we're in my bailiwick. I'm not improvising on MMT here.)
Vaccine scheduling in the United States was run like an online system for getting Springsteen tickets in NJ. In fact, some states like Florida actually did use a system for event tickets (EventBrite) to schedule appointments. Instead, the system should have been set up like booking a flight on a travel website (the latter are able to book from multiple providers and show you multiple scheduling options).
The first way was easier to set up right away, and people were demanding that appointments be made immediately. The latter would have been better, but required action by the Federal government to coordinate all the providers of injections, which the Trump Administration refused to take responsibility for.
I don't know about the various software applications for scheduling, but one of the most critical inputs for any successful scheduling system is having a decent sense of available supply. On that point, the Trump admin certainly didn't do us any favors:
"When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses that had been held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed, according to state and federal officials briefed on distribution plans."
(WaPo, jan 15, still during Trump's admin)
Why not pin the rap on likable Dr. Fauci for the mess during the last couple months of 2020 and first and last month of Trump’s term in 2021?
The governors wanted to control the distribution on their turfs to upstage Washington. Their reasoning was selfish, the outcome, a disaster.
My personal experience was very frustrating, along with many of the elderly, some with little or no computer knowledge. Of course many just gave up, admitting their limitations, when the faults were in the systems. Now that is ironic.
Who made the decision to go online when large segments of the population and areas of the country lack wifi? Would the whole process been more successful and productive without the circus sideshow of the final days of the election and aftermath?
mtierney said:
Why not pin the rap on likable Dr. Fauci for the mess during the last couple months of 2020 and first and last month of Trump’s term in 2021?
Because that would be a nonsensical accusation, and a transparent and sad attempt to deflect blame from Trump's criminal negligence and incompetence.
The governors wanted to control the distribution on their turfs to upstage Washington. Their reasoning was selfish, the outcome, a disaster.
Still waiting for an example -- any example -- of the Trump admin seeking to take responsibility for distribution but being rebuffed by a governor.
My personal experience was very frustrating, along with many of the elderly, some with little or no computer knowledge. Of course many just gave up, admitting their limitations, when the faults were in the systems. Now that is ironic.
Again, it's amazing to me the depths of your partisanship that experiences one would expect to inspire empathy and understanding on your part instead result in dishonesty and willful ignorance.
Who made the decision to go online when large segments of the population and areas of the country lack wifi? Would the whole process been more successful and productive without the circus sideshow of the final days of the election and aftermath?
There's one man responsible for the "circus sideshow of the final days of the election and aftermath." Do you regret your support for him?
mtierney said:
Why not pin the rap on likable Dr. Fauci for the mess during the last couple months of 2020 and first and last month of Trump’s term in 2021?
Dr. Fauci wasn't in charge of distributing the vaccine, or responsible for seeing that people got vaccinated. Trump, and people he was responsible to oversee, was responsible. He didn't get it done.
mtierney said:
The governors wanted to control the distribution on their turfs to upstage Washington. Their reasoning was selfish, the outcome, a disaster.
Nobody believes this lie.
mtierney said:
Would the whole process been more successful and productive without the circus sideshow of the final days of the election and aftermath?
Yes, the whole process would have been more successful and productive without Trump.
mtierney said:
One example, more to follow...
What was the federal distribution plan in this posted example?
mtierney said:
Why not pin the rap on likable Dr. Fauci for the mess during the last couple months of 2020 and first and last month of Trump’s term in 2021?
The governors wanted to control the distribution on their turfs to upstage Washington. Their reasoning was selfish, the outcome, a disaster.
My personal experience was very frustrating, along with many of the elderly, some with little or no computer knowledge. Of course many just gave up, admitting their limitations, when the faults were in the systems. Now that is ironic.
Who made the decision to go online when large segments of the population and areas of the country lack wifi? Would the whole process been more successful and productive without the circus sideshow of the final days of the election and aftermath?
this is a really bizarre post. completely detached from reality. (except for the part about getting frustrated with the scheduling app. though I'm not seeing the irony.)
mtierney said:
One example, more to follow...
do you understand that governors had to do this because that was the Feds plan - leave it up to the states?
apparently not.
For Sale
Garage Sales
-
HUGE Rummage sale to benefit the Bloomfield High School Robotics Team Sale Date: Apr 27, 2024
More info
Featured Events
-
Stephen Whitty Presents - Hometown Movie Stars: The Celebrated Actors Of CHS
May 6, 2024 at 7:00pm
-
'Beethoven's Wrong Note: A Steampunk Opera'
May 12, 2024 at 2:00pm
Advertisement
Thank you. I remember also the competing governors of New York and New Jersey holding press conferences almost daily (I believe Murphy is still on two or three times a week). I guess I have gotten cynical in my old age, but as Washington was the focus during the early months of 2020, as reality set in on the pandemic — in an election year to boot — political competitions were inevitable.