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How Trump Gutted Obamas Pandemic-Preparedness Systems
Former officials: Trumps reshuffling of positions and departments, focus on business solutions, downgrading of science, left the country dangerously unprepared for an unprecedented pandemic.
By Abigail Tracy
May 1, 2020
When the first reported cases of Ebola in Guinea came to light in March 2014, it set off a mad scramble inside the Obama White House to track and contain the spread of the virus, which killed around 50% of the people it infected. Though not nearly as contagious as the current coronavirus, an epidemic, or even a pandemic, seemed possible if the disease werent confined to its West African redoubts. The Obama White House had clear protocols and chains of command for these kinds of threats. The way to stop the forest fire is to isolate the embers, Beth Cameron, a former civil servant who ran the White Houses National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, told me. Cameron and her colleagues quickly drew up a memo to Susan Rice, the national-security adviser, and Lisa Monaco, the homeland-security adviser, outlining what was known about the outbreak, setting off a chain of action that went up through the Oval Office, then spread through the government.
In the summer of 2018, on John Boltons watch, the team Cameron once ran was one of three directorates merged into one amid an overhaul and streamlining of Donald Trumps National Security Council. And the position Monaco previously held, homeland-security adviser, was downgraded, stripped of its authority to convene the cabinet.
Obamas team never faced a crisis as serious as the novel coronavirus, a truly unprecedented challenge. But officials who worked on past crises and experts on pandemic response believe that Trumps dismissaland in some aspects, wholesale discardingof the Obama administrations preparedness structures and principles, and the current administrations ideas about governmentthat states could and should take take responsibility, that business could be more effective than government at solving problems at this scalehave left them dangerously unprepared.
Trump has yet to do this. President Trump has, throughout this, seemed a little schizophrenic about his role, Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development who ran USAIDs Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance in the Obama administration, told me. On the one hand, he clearly wants all the credit for it when things go right. On the other hand, he has furiously attempted to avoid having to take ownership for the success of the effort he wants the credit without the accountability.
The biggest difference between Obamas approach and Trump has to do with science. Traditionally, we have had a situation where the response is always scientifically, technically proven, says a former government official. Of course there are political considerations. But the options that are presented are fundamentally sound from a scientific perspective.
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/trump-obama-coronavirus-pandemic-response
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,047 posts)Cha
(297,802 posts)Super Important.. I don't care if clusterfuck takes "responsibility" or not.