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Sunday, March 15, 2020 11:37:12 PM
Mismanagement, missed opportunities: How the White House bungled the coronavirus response
Trump’s own advisers acknowledged to NBC News that the failure to focus on widespread testing was a major misstep.
....Presidemt Trump declared a national emergency at the White House on Friday, with LHC Group Executive Vice President Bruce Greenstein; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci; and Vice President Mike Pence.Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
March 15, 2020, 1:45 AM AEDT
By Ken Dilanian, Carol E. Lee, Dan De Luce, Laura Strickler and Suzy Khimm
Luciana Borio once worked on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, but she left last year after a purge of the global health unit.
So when she realized how bad the coronavirus outbreak was likely to get — and saw that the Trump administration was not taking the necessary steps to contain it — all she could do was take her case to the public.
“Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic,” was the headline of her Jan. 28 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal,...
[...]
On Jan. 8, the CDC issued an alert about the disease. But the agency was without one of its crucial partners in combatting such a threat. The CDC would have worked closely with the NSC’s global health unit, but that had been disbanded.
[...]
Eight days later, on Jan. 29, Trump announced the creation of a Coronavirus Task Force to lead the U.S. response. At the time, the White House said the task force was being led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.
Azar was a logical choice because there was no senior person at the White House with experience in public health.
In 2018, Trump fired his homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, whose portfolio included global pandemics. The next month, national security adviser John Bolton disbanded the NSC’s global health unit. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, the top official in charge of a pandemic response, also left his job. So did Borio, whose title was director for medical and biodefense preparedness.
None of them was replaced. That meant Trump had no top advisers in the White House with expertise in global pandemics.
“You organize your NSC around the threats you care about,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the U.S. government’s response to international disasters under the Obama administration.
Pandemics were deemed a lower priority for the Trump national security team, Konyndyk and other public health experts said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/mismanagement-missed-opportunities-how-white-house-bungled-coronavirus-response-n1158746
Trump’s own advisers acknowledged to NBC News that the failure to focus on widespread testing was a major misstep.
....Presidemt Trump declared a national emergency at the White House on Friday, with LHC Group Executive Vice President Bruce Greenstein; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci; and Vice President Mike Pence.Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
March 15, 2020, 1:45 AM AEDT
By Ken Dilanian, Carol E. Lee, Dan De Luce, Laura Strickler and Suzy Khimm
Luciana Borio once worked on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, but she left last year after a purge of the global health unit.
So when she realized how bad the coronavirus outbreak was likely to get — and saw that the Trump administration was not taking the necessary steps to contain it — all she could do was take her case to the public.
“Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic,” was the headline of her Jan. 28 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal,...
[...]
On Jan. 8, the CDC issued an alert about the disease. But the agency was without one of its crucial partners in combatting such a threat. The CDC would have worked closely with the NSC’s global health unit, but that had been disbanded.
[...]
Eight days later, on Jan. 29, Trump announced the creation of a Coronavirus Task Force to lead the U.S. response. At the time, the White House said the task force was being led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.
Azar was a logical choice because there was no senior person at the White House with experience in public health.
In 2018, Trump fired his homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, whose portfolio included global pandemics. The next month, national security adviser John Bolton disbanded the NSC’s global health unit. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, the top official in charge of a pandemic response, also left his job. So did Borio, whose title was director for medical and biodefense preparedness.
None of them was replaced. That meant Trump had no top advisers in the White House with expertise in global pandemics.
“You organize your NSC around the threats you care about,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the U.S. government’s response to international disasters under the Obama administration.
Pandemics were deemed a lower priority for the Trump national security team, Konyndyk and other public health experts said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/mismanagement-missed-opportunities-how-white-house-bungled-coronavirus-response-n1158746
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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