Covid-19 Is Bad. But It May Not Be the 'Big One'

[Initech]

In 2005, US government health agencies were obsessed with a disease threat that was rolling across the globe: H5N1 avian flu, which had leaped from wild birds into chickens, and from there into humans, and was killing more than half of the people unlucky enough to become infected with it. It was the second international disease emergency of the decade, following SARS in 2003, which had swept out of southern China, sickened people in two dozen countries, and cost the economies of the Pacific Rim approximately $40 billion.

Kicked into action by SARS and alarmed by the potential for bird flu to wreak havoc, the government was on the verge of publishing an ambitious plan, a National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, to anticipate any fast-moving epidemic. But at the Department of Health and Human Services, epidemiologist Michael T. Osterholm—the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who was wrapping up a four-year stint as a special adviser to HHS secretary Tommy G. Thompson—was not convinced that the US, or the world, was doing enough.

In an article for the journal Foreign Affairs, Osterholm laid out the problems inadequate preparation would create, if a planet-spanning pandemic got going: It would shut national borders, create shortages of essential goods, collapse major industries, and close theaters, restaurants, and schools. And then he wrote this: “Someday, after the next pandemic has come and gone, a commission much like the 9/11 Commission will be charged with determining how well government, business, and public health leaders prepared the world for the catastrophe when they had clear warning. What will be the verdict?”

Fifteen years on, Osterholm’s forecast has proven unnervingly correct. His prediction that the US will need a second 9/11 Commission to examine its failed pandemic response is getting a second look as well—because health experts are coming to the realization that, as devastating as Covid-19 has been, it could have been far worse. This pandemic has not approached the apocalyptic impact of the 1918 influenza, which killed an estimated 100 million people between 1918 and 1919, or of HIV, which has killed 32 million people since it arrived in 1981.
https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-is-bad-but-it-may-not-be-the-big-one/

Screw Space Force, we need a branch of the military dedicated to helping fight off global health threats. Trump tore down all of our pandemic safety nets, and now we're in a pandemic that may never end. Dems should be making this a campaign point.

[soothsayer]

1. Obama had an early warning system and other measures, yes?

Biden can restore those things. I’m sure it will come up before the election.

[Initech]

2. Yup, Trump tore them all down.

And now we're in a pandemic that may never end thanks to him.

[napi21]

3. Obama had set up a special group of employeesdedicated to preparation ofa potential pandemic. DT

got rid of them because we don't need to pay people to sit around waiting for something that might never come. When aasked about it now, he said he wasn't sorry. Uf we need them we can hire them back.

[smirkymonkey]

4. As far as I know, the Trump administration is currently doing NOTHING. Not for this pandemic,

nor the next wave, nor preparing for the next pandemic, whatever that might be. Am I correct or have I missed something?

They have not done one thing. They are treating this like it no longer an issue of concern. If this comes back with a vengeance in the fall, and if we have an even greater wave of hospitalizations and deaths, this is all on them. They should have been prepping all along for the possibility and they have completely blown it off.

I am beginning to think it's all by design and that Trump will use it as an excuse to suspend elections. We know he is fighting tooth and nail to prevent voting by mail. Sometimes I wonder if that is why he wants these rallies in stadiums and encourages no masks, and tells people to go out and live their lives as if nothing ever happened.

I really think he wants this to get worse so he will have an excuse to declare martial law, call off elections and finally become the dictator he has always wanted to be.

[Initech]

5. He definitely does not give a shit.

And when (if) a vaccine becomes available, he'll dangle the promise of getting it in front of us the same way that a jockey dangles a carrot in front of a horse. His favorite states like Florida will get it first, because they voted for him, and a state like California? We'll get reused empty vials, if anything.

So there's two keys to ending the pandemic - a vaccine and competent leadership. If Trump gets reelected, expect the pandemic to last another 5 - 6 years.