Obama's staff started putting the pandemic response playbook together in 2016. It has been ignored.
Of Course the Trump Administration Ignored a Step-by-Step Guide to Fighting a Coronavirus-esque Pandemic
Politico reports that in 2016, the Obama administration created a 69-page National Security Council playbook that included hundreds of tactics and policy decisions to “prevent, slow, or mitigate the spread of an emerging infectious disease threat.” So simple one would think even Donald Trump could follow it, the guide asks questions like “Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for health care workers who are providing medical care? If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”
In addition to practical matters related to things like sufficient personal protective equipment—a dearth of which is a gigantic problem as health professionals try to deal with the surging coronavirus—the guide urges the government to present a “unified message” in order to effectively address the public’s concerns. “Early coordination of risk communications through a single federal spokesperson is critical,” the playbook advises. Viewed as a corrective to initial stumbling by global leaders on the 2014–2015 Ebola crisis, the formally named “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents,” aka “the pandemic playbook,” was created to ensure responses to subsequent pandemics would be better handled.
Transition exercises did not fare much better.
Before Trump’s inauguration, a warning: ‘The worst influenza pandemic since 1918’
Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides faced a major test: the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans.
In a sober briefing, Trump’s incoming team learned that the disease was an emerging pandemic — a strain of novel influenza known as H9N2 — and that health systems were crashing in Asia, overwhelmed by the demand.
“Health officials warn that this could become the worst influenza pandemic since 1918,” Trump’s aides were told. Soon, they heard cases were popping up in California and Texas.
The briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn’t really happen — it was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump’s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.
[snip]
Obama aides, in op-eds and essays ripping the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, have pointed to the Jan. 13, 2017, session as a key example of their effort to press the importance of pandemic preparedness to their successors.
[snip]
None of the sources argued that one meeting three years ago could have dramatically altered events today. But Obama aides say the Trump administration’s fumbling of the coronavirus outbreak is partly rooted in how unprepared — and in some cases unwilling — it was to engage in transition exercises at all in late 2016 and early 2017.
This level of malfeasance isn't bumbling or even criminal incompetence. It is deliberate, it is widespread throughout most if not all departments of this administration, many of which are now poorly run due to unqualified appointments, high turnover, and/or an intentional lack of staff.
This is sabotage.
= new reply since forum marked as read
