“The crisis is an unforeseen problem that came out of nowhere.” (Trump on 6 March). “We’re having to fix a problem that, four weeks ago, nobody ever thought would be a problem.” (Trump: 11 March) “It’s something that nobody expected.” (Trump: 14 March).
*****
Yesterday, I talked about Event 201, a major pandemic
exercise run in October 2019. A month before that the White House economists
had published a study that warned of a pandemic disease that could kill half a
million Americans and devastate the economy by inflicting a damage of $3.8 trillion.
Tomas Phillipson, the Trump administration economist, presented the 41-page report
to senior Trump officials. It was ignored, and they threatened to fire
Phillipson. Phillipson left his job in June and resumed his teaching role at
the University of Chicago.
*****
Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, presented
the threat assessment to Trump twice, in Feb. 2018 and Jan. 2019.
“A novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily
transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat, with pathogens
such as the MERS coronavirus having pandemic potential.” He wrote in 2018.
“We assess that the United States and the world will
remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious
disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely
affect the world economy and strain international resources.” He wrote in 2019.
In July 2019, Dan Coats was fired by Trump through a
tweet.
*****
“Trump: master of disaster? The president is not
ready to handle a global crisis.” I urge you to read this March 2017article by Jeremy Konyndyk, a former director of USAID (United States Agency
for International Development), who had handled H1N1, Zika and Ebola crises.
“A major new global health crisis is a question of
when, not if.” He says. “Every president dating back to Ronald Reagan has dealt
with major and unexpected outbreaks – AIDS, SARS, Bird flu, Ebola, Zika. Fortunately,
the past outbreaks were either highly contagious or highly fatal but not both
at once. At some point a highly fatal, highly contagious virus will emerge.”
Bush and Obama handled the outbreaks extremely well.
Obama had appointed Ron Klain as a full time Ebola czar.
In May 2018, Timothy Ziemer, the top White House
official responsible for leading the US response in the event of a deadly
pandemic, was pushed out. The global health security team he oversaw was
disbanded. Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security advisor, who had
called for a comprehensive biodefence strategy against pandemics, was fired.
Konyndyk, the author of the 2017 article, called the
firings a rollback of progress on US Health security preparedness. US has
actively unlearnt the lessons learned over the last 15 years. The moves make us
materially less safe, he added.
*****
Every big corporation has a contingency planning
bible. In Obama’s time, a “pandemic playbook” was created for the US
presidents. Although they couldn’t have known about Trump becoming a president
then, the playbook was an ‘idiot’s guide’ giving step-by-step instructions at
the sign of a pandemic. It was not for public distribution, but for the office
of the US president. Even a barely literate president should be able to read
its forty pages and take appropriate actions.
*****
When you read the above documents, it becomes clear
Trump has not read any of them. He is like a person who doesn’t take health
insurance, because he has never fallen ill before. Or like a person who refuses
to write a will because he has never died before.
More on the subject tomorrow.
*****
Ravi
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