Not since 1918 have we seen a pandemic of the magnitude in that disrupts the very fabric of our society in a way that puts it on hold indefinitely. The 1918 pandemic lasted two years, infected over 500 million, and killed over 50 million worldwide. Yet the U.S. found itself totally unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic.
The China outbreak was well publicized in early January, but Trump and FOX News claimed it was another Democratic hoax He next claimed it was an unforeseen problem, something nobody expected, and a crisis that came out of nowhere. All claims are false.
There were multiple warnings. There are no excuses. America should have been prepared.
In 2012 a survey conducted by a DOD contractor, Rand Corporation, concluded that only pandemics posed an existential danger to the US. “Pandemics are capable of completely destroying America’s way of life.”
In 2015, Ezra Klein after an interview with Bill Gates wrote in VOX, “a pandemic disease is the most predictable catastrophe in the history of the human race.”
In 2017, Lisa Monaco, Obama’s outgoing Homeland Security Advisor informed Trump’s incoming team that the nightmare scenario was a pandemic created by a new strain of influenza. A simulation showed how the U.S. government should respond to a flu pandemic that halts international travel, upends global supply chains, tanks the stock market, and burdens health-care systems—all with a vaccine many months from materializing.
Trump’s team ignored it.
In 2018, Luciana Borio, director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, warned “the threat of pandemic influenza is our number-one security concern.” But soon after, Trump closed the NSC’s unit for preparing and responding to pandemics.
Trump had no interest. Trump was more interested in border walls. Better TV ratings.
Duane Catlett
Bozeman
Letter to the Editor, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, April 7, 2020