Many people will die who would otherwise be alive because of the ineptitude of the current
occupant of the Oval Office (“dt”). He delayed; cut anything started by or related to his predecessor, the last legitimately elected President of the United States.
Time is past to discuss in sober fashion the “two sides” - as if every issue has only two sides - of arguments about COVID-19. People with expertise have warned about this possibility - for years. The Federal government had tried to prepare for it.
President George W Bush read a book - seriously - while on vacation in 2005 about the Spanish Flu of 1918 and became alarmed about the prospects of a pandemic on that scale.
Bill Gates gave a “Ted” talk about the prospects in March, 2015. Too dry or deep because it was an intellectual talking? How about the 2011 movie “Contagion”? Wait, no car chases or shoot-outs. 1995's “Outbreak”? Disease was cured overnight.
Actually people from the last administration tried to brief those who were to follow, but hey, where’s the excitement about pandemics? Besides, golf outings take a lot of planning, and this administration has seen dt play a lot of golf.
A Rear Admiral who led the “global health security team” on the National Security Council (NSC) was asked to leave, in May 2018, the day after Nat’l Security Advisor John Bolton took office, and the team was disbanded.
This administration, according to Snopes, “axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it,” but noted Bolton headed NSC’s “chain of command at the time.”
A March 3 “FactCheck” article titled “Democrats’ Misleading Coronavirus Claims” notes “the lack of someone in the White House to coordinate the response to a widespread disease outbreak in the U.S. is something numerous experts and groups at the time had cautioned against.”
“In a November 2019 report, the Center for Strategic & International Studies recommended restoring the global health security position on the NSC as one of seven key changes to better protect the American public from global health threats. Id.
“It remains unclear who would be in charge at the White House in the case of a grave pandemic threat or cross-border biological crisis,” the report reads, noting that such leadership is “critical in navigating challenging political issues like quarantines and travel bans and in communicating to and reassuring the American public.” Id.
“The authorities currently in place at HHS are insufficient to address these critical, complex, and often urgent interagency demands,” the report continues. “In addition to coordinating the interagency process, a global health security and biodefense directorate at the NSC can reform fragmented programs and ensure higher efficiencies, strengthened accountability, and better spending of scarce resources.” Id.
Instead of trained professionals with years of experience and a structure formed to address this crisis, we have Jared and Ivanka on a committee? Okay - VP Pence is on the first-string committee to address COVID-19.
The former Indiana Governor was picked by dt because Indiana has such great health care. Pence has experience with contagion - he advanced it. His bungling of HIV in southern Indiana caused people to die.
I’m Mark Small, a candidate in the June 2 GOP primary for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District. We need to “promote the Progress of Science” U.S. Const. Art. I, sec 8 and take the GOP back from dumbasses. I approve of this blog. Hell, I wrote it.