George W. Bush in 2005: 'If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare'

[Dennis Donovan]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-bush-2005-wait-pandemic-late-prepare/story?id=69979013

A book about the 1918 flu pandemic spurred the government to action.

By Matthew Mosk

April 5, 2020, 4:08 AM

In the summer of 2005, President George W. Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he began flipping through an advanced copy of a new book about the 1918 flu pandemic. He couldn't put it down.

When he returned to Washington, he called his top homeland security adviser into the Oval Office and gave her the galley of historian John M. Barry's "The Great Influenza," which told the chilling tale of the mysterious plague that "would kill more people than the outbreak of any other disease in human history."

"You've got to read this," Fran Townsend remembers the president telling her. "He said, 'Look, this happens every 100 years. We need a national strategy.'"

Thus was born the nation's most comprehensive pandemic plan -- a playbook that included diagrams for a global early warning system, funding to develop new, rapid vaccine technology, and a robust national stockpile of critical supplies, such as face masks and ventilators, Townsend said.

The effort was intense over the ensuing three years, including exercises where cabinet officials gamed out their responses, but it was not sustained. Large swaths of the ambitious plan were either not fully realized or entirely shelved as other priorities and crises took hold.

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FFS. Even SHRUB knew that the threat was serious 15 years ago. And that simpleton read it in a book.

[dalton99a]

1. My Pet Goat wasn't the only thing he read

By all accounts he does read books - he married a librarian

[Dennis Donovan]

5. I know. I was riffing on my 2005 view of him

[neeksgeek]

2. I never liked GWB. But I never considered him a fool.

I despised his policies, most of the time, and I certainly voted against him. He wasn’t our smartest President. But compared to Trump, he was downright brilliant.

[blitzen]

6. And at least he took his job seriously and was not a narcissistic egomaniac. n/t

[ChazII]

3. A broken clock is right twice a day. n/t

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. "In the summer of 2005, President George W. Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas."

Just a few weeks later, he was bungling the federal response to Katrina. He was not a good president.

[dalton99a]

7. W was a lazy idiot

He allowed Rove and Cheney to use him