According to The Red Cross, there are fewer house fires in December and January.
Let’s say the mayor of your town announced on January 15th “Well, there hasn’t been a fire in a few weeks, so I’m shutting down the fire department” and then boasted about how much money he’s saved.
Now imagine fires started increasing and people died because the only fire trucks were in the next county. Fast response is critical.
We’d call that mayor an idiot. We’d start blaming the increase in dead people on that mayor.
That’s why I call this “the Trump pandemic”. He disbanded the pandemic team.
The Global Health Security and Biodefense unit — responsible for pandemic preparedness — was established in 2015 by Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice. The unit resided under the National Security Council (NSC).
In other words: the threat of viruses from foreign lands was considered a national security thread. The kind of thing the government should be protecting us from. Just like any other foreign invasion, it requires constant vigilance, planning, and preparedness.
The GHSB not only had pre-written plans for hundreds of likely scenarios, but they also ran “fire drills” to train managers in all parts of the government to both teach them the skills required to respond effectively. They ran table-top games to find the gaps and improve the plans.
When Moscow Mitch McConnell claimed “the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan”, he was wrong. He later admitted he was wrong once someone pointed out that not only did they have a game plan, they literally wrote it up and handed it to the incoming administration who threw it away along with the entire Global Health Security and Biodefense unit. (Read it here!)
So, rather than flying by the seat of their pants, we should have been using a coordinated, tested, action plan.
Trump had a “if Obama did it, we must shut it down” policy. No evaluation of whether it was good, effective, or anything else. Just shut it down out of spite. He shut down the pandemic defense unit and, oh, by the way, it was “the same day a new Ebola outbreak was declared in Congo”.
So, the next pandemic arrives. A little coordinated effort and following the plan would have stopped COVID-19. It would have been a nothing-burger.
Instead, thousands of people are DEAD DEAD DEAD.
THIS WAS EASY TO PREVENT. THE ECONOMY IS FUCKED. NONE OF THIS HAD TO BE THAT WAY.
THOUSANDS OF EASILY PREVENTABLE DEATHS CONTINUE TO HAPPEN EVERY DAY.
THIS IS TRUMP’S FAULT. TRUMP IS KILLING AMERICANS.
This is Trump’s pandemic!
