Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Excerpt - “You have to at least now be anticipating and responsibly planning against a sort of pandemic level scenario reaching the US,” Jeremy Konyndyk, who ran foreign disaster assistance in the Obama administration, said.

“The fact that they explicitly dismantled the office in the White House that was tasked with preparing for exactly this kind of a risk is hugely concerning,” said Konyndyk, now a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. “Both the structure and all the institutional memory is gone now.”

Funding has also been cut drastically to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), forcing it to reduce or discontinue epidemic-prevention efforts in 39 out of the 49 countries .. https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-to-scale-back-work-in-dozens-of-foreign-countries-amid-funding-worries-1516398717 .. it had been helping. Among the countries where CDC efforts were scaled back were Haiti, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as China, where the agency provided technical assistance.

In its 2020 budget the Trump administration proposed a further 10% cut .. http://thenationshealth.aphapublications.org/content/49/3/1.2 .. in CDC funding, equivalent to $750m. It zeroed out funding for epidemiology and laboratory capacity at state and local levels.

Funding will also dry up this year for a tiered epidemic response .. https://thebulletin.org/2020/01/outbreaks-of-lethal-diseases-like-ebola-and-the-wuhan-coronavirus-happen-regularly-the-us-government-just-cut-funding-for-the-hospitals-that-deal-with-them/ .. within the US. The system was set up in the aftermath of the Ebola scare, and involved identifying patients infected by “special pathogens” in frontline hospitals and their transfer up a chain of specially equipped regional hospitals where they could be safely treated.

After this year’s cuts, 10 advanced treatment facilities will still receive funding, but not the 60 other treatment centres one tier below.

“Those assessment and treatment hospitals are kind of wondering where they’re going to get funding to continue these very costly efforts,” said Saskia Popescu, an infection prevention epidemiologist, at George Mason University. “So not only are we creating more vulnerable hospitals, but we’re getting this message across that hospitals, if you want to prepare, you’re kind of on your own.”

From, US underprepared for coronavirus due to Trump cuts, say health experts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/us-coronavirus-budget-cuts-trump-underprepared

which i inserted into one of the other replies, here ..

Coronavirus COVID-19 vaccine days away from animal testing, Queensland researchers believe
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=154040968

See also:

Trump's coronavirus response is worse than incompetent
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=154039194