Guess quality isn't everyone's job one

A week or so ago, I saw an article in the Washington Post  about a volunteer coronavirus response team that Jared Kushner, son-in-law extraordinaire, had assembled to help with supply needs. Ah, Jared Kushner, I was going to say he's the Swiss Army Knife of sons-in-law. But then I remembered that a Swiss Army Knife is useful and does a lot of things quite well. Kushner, on the other hand...The question is not what he can't do - hasn't he been in charge of everything for this administration at some point or another? - but whether there's actually anything he can do well. Okay: I'll give you that he did an okay job on a prison reform initiative.  But other than that, he's mostly Jared Fubar.

I'm all for volunteers jumping in feet or head first to help out. There's (sort of) a war on. Think of all those "Dollare A Year Men" during World War II. They did good mobilizing industry to switch from civilian production to war footing and churn out all those fighter planes for the Rosies to rivet on.

But this administration has such a long track record of scorning expertise, it's not surprising that those smarter-than-thou folks from BCG and McKinsey were foundering. Disheartening, perhaps, but not surprising.

The coronavirus response being spearheaded by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has relied in part on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with little expertise in the tasks they were assigned, exacerbating chronic problems in obtaining supplies for hospitals and other needs, according to numerous government officials and a volunteer involved in the effort.

About two dozen employees from Boston Consulting Group, Insight, McKinsey and other firms have volunteered their time — some on paid vacation leave from their jobs and others without pay — to aid the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to administration officials and others familiar with the arrangement.

Although some of the volunteers have relevant backgrounds and experience, many others were poorly matched with their assigned jobs, including those given the task of securing personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals nationwide, according to a complaint filed last month with the House Oversight Committee.

I wonder if it was one of Jared's Jeniuses that was responsible to shipping out all those mislabeled and possibly unusable nasal swabs to the State of Washington.

What happened there was that the state health department warehouse was expecting a big shipment of testing swabs. What showed up instead was:

...a surprise substitution: Dozens of boxes marked “Comforts For Baby Cotton Swabs” packed with what appeared to be thousands of Q-tips. (Source: Seattle Times)

Baby swabs are basically Q-tips. And they're not suitable for medical testing.

Turns out the shipment wasn't baby swabs. Good news! They were, in fact, nasal test swabs suitable for specimen collections. 

What the supplier had neglected to do was send out the memo informing folks that, in order to expedite production, they'd used old packaging.

Nice if they'd including the memo in the packaging, but fair enough.

Mistakes happen. We all overlook things. It could happen to anyone. There's the fog of war, and then there's the fog of war production. Did I mention that there's a war (sort of) on? Etc.

A bigger problem was that:

The nasopharyngeal (NP) and nasal swabs widely used for specimen collection typically come individually wrapped in sterile packaging to avoid contamination.

Not clear whether the State of Washington was going to be able to use them. 

The state must now conduct quality assurance tests before determining whether and how it can use the swabs to enhance its coronavirus testing, [Reed Schuler, advisor to Gov. Jay Inslee] said. That could involve taking laborious steps to individually package each swab before distribution, what Schuler described as “just another obstacle in a wild saga to expand testing.”

Wouldn't you think that someone, somewhere along the line would have checked with someone, somewhere who actually knew something about testing swabs, to see what the requirements for them are? Other than that they're a lot longer than a Q-tip. Shouldn't quality be someone's Job One?

There have been tons of problems associated with the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some are completely understandable: information changes rapidly, there are supply issues, demand issues, etc. But some of less forgivable. As in lying, as in firing and/or not listening to those who know something. As in the feds telling the states that they're on their own, then snatching up scarce supplies so that they can - or so it appears - ship them to states that don't need them (yet), while short-sheeting the states in need. (Or sending them supplies that are less-than-usable.)

Sure, the Trump administration has repeatedly demonstrated its incompetence. But they've also done a fairly good job of repeatedly demonstrating their malevolence. 

The question becomes is the fact of blue states getting short shrift while the red states are being treated better than well a matter of incompetence or malevolence? You decide...

Meanwhile, the State of Washington - where they certainly do seem to be doing an excellent job of responding to the pandemic - is left holding the bag on a bunch of testing swabs that they may not be able to use for testing. They might have been better off with the knock-off Q-tips. At least they could get the wax out of their ears and the boogers out of their babies nostrils.