Mod: Trump dismantled the entire pandemic response chain of command because it was something Obama had created. This is unfortunate timing.
Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response (
Foreign Policy link): When
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the
World Health Organization (WHO), declared the
Wuhan coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern on Thursday, he praised
China for taking “unprecedented” steps to control the deadly virus. “I have never seen for myself this kind of mobilization,” he noted. “
China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.”
The epidemic control efforts unfolding today in
China—including placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown, shutting down a national holiday, building enormous quarantine hospitals in days’ time, and ramping up 24-hour manufacturing of medical equipment—are indeed gargantuan. It’s impossible to watch them without wondering, “What would we do? How would my government respond if this virus spread across my country?”
For the
United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the
Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the
White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the
U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion.
If the
United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the
White House urgently needs to clarify what it is if the
United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the
White House urgently needs to clarify what it is—not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.
In the spring of 2018, the
White House pushed
Congress to cut funding for
Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in
Ebola-ravaged
Liberia,
Sierra Leone, and
Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the aisle,
President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate
Ebola funds a month later.
But other
White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the
CDC,
NSC,
DHS, and
HHS. And the government’s $30 million
Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.
Rush Limbaugh Claims The ‘Common Cold’ Coronavirus Is An Effort To ‘Get Trump’ (
Huffington Post link): Right-wing radio host
Rush Limbaugh claimed on his show Monday that the potentially lethal
coronavirus afflicting several countries is nothing more than a “
common cold” blown out of proportion by the media to take down
President Donald Trump ― even as he also asserted it was a “bioweapon” created by
China in a laboratory.
“It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down
Donald Trump,”
Limbaugh said at the start of his lengthy, misinformation-filled rant. “Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. ... I’m dead right on this. The
coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”
Mod: Have another cigar, Rush.
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