Only One President in the Last 20 Years Wasn't Worried About a Pandemic
Every president for the last 20 years has predicted the eventuality of a pandemic and preached preparedness. Except for Trump
[link:https://thebulwark.com/newsletter-issue/only-one-president-in-the-last-20-years-wasnt-worried-about-a-pandemic/|
In a November 2005 speech at the National Institutes of Health, Bush laid out proposals in granular detail—describing with stunning prescience how a pandemic in the United States would unfold. Among those in the audience was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leader of the current crisis response, who was then and still is now the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“A pandemic is a lot like a forest fire,” Bush said at the time. “If caught early it might be extinguished with limited damage. If allowed to smolder, undetected, it can grow to an inferno that can spread quickly beyond our ability to control it.” . .
“To respond to a pandemic, we need medical personnel and adequate supplies of equipment,” Bush said. “In a pandemic, everything from syringes to hospital beds, respirators masks and protective equipment would be in short supply
“If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine on line quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain,” he said.
The Obama administration created an actual playbook for dealing with a pandemic—the 69-page document is literally called a “playbook”—which they handed off to the Trump administration in 2017.
= new reply since forum marked as read
