Replies to post #110351 on Your Economy (No Politics) (YE1)

[Ayock]

In a rambling press conference that displayed his utter lack of knowledge about public health, Trump announced that he has appointed Mike Pence to lead the administration’s task force for responding to the coronavirus outbreak. He praised Mike Pence’s previous experience handling public health issues, saying “he has a certain talent for this”.

As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence enabled the worst HIV outbreak in his state’s history and actively blocked a policy that would have contained the crisis. He slashed public health funding, which forced HIV testing centers to close, and then took nearly three months to allow a temporary needle exchange to stem the crisis. And now this man is in charge of handling an outbreak of global proportions.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to downplay the scale of the outbreak in direct contradiction to experts’ warnings, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar has refused to say that an eventual vaccine will be affordable to everyone. The sheer incompetence of this administration continues to shake me to my core.

Robert Reich

[arizona1]

Snopes: Did Trump Fire the US Pandemic Response Team?

Trump Taps Pence To Lead Coronavirus Response Team
February 26, 2020

From Snopes about Trump and our ability to handle pandemics:: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

Did Trump Fire the US Pandemic Response Team?
As a new coronavirus spread in 2020, so did concerns about the United States' preparedness for a potential pandemic.

Claim

The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.

Rating



Origin

Amid warnings from public health officials that a 2020 outbreak of a new coronavirus could soon become a pandemic involving the U.S., alarmed readers asked Snopes to verify a rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump “fired the entire pandemic response team two years ago and then didn’t replace them.”

The claim came from a series of tweets posted by Judd Legum, who runs Popular Information, a newsletter he describes as being about “politics and power.” The commentary is representative of sharp criticism from Democratic legislators (and some Republicans) that the Trump administration has ill-prepared the country for a pandemic, even as one is looming.

Legum outlined a series of cost-cutting decisions made by the Trump administration in preceding years that gutted the nation’s infectious disease defense infrastructure. The “pandemic response team” is a reference to news stories from spring 2018 reporting that White House officials tasked with directing a national response to a pandemic had been ousted.

Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton. Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, who as The Washington Post reported, “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior.

It’s true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213022608