Let's be clear on Covid 19.

[trotsky]

Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still. Lack of testing, lack of
PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks), lack of
ventilators, and the lack of a leader who gives a shit or even has
vaguely enough intelligence to deal with this is causing the dead bodies
to literally stack up:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/us/makeshift-morgues-coronavirus-new-york/index.html

> For the first time since 9/11, NYC has set up makeshift morgues. This time, it's in anticipation of coronavirus deaths

Nice. And Trump, of course, isn't going to be much help (read: none) to
blue states because they don't vote for him. I don't know what our
resident fake lawyer calls this but I call it second degree murder. Fun
stuff.

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[FPP]

On 3/30/20 8:20 AM, trotsky wrote:
> Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
> and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
> office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
> coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still.  Lack of testing, lack of
> PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks), lack of
> ventilators, and the lack of a leader who gives a shit or even has
> vaguely enough intelligence to deal with this is causing the dead bodies
> to literally stack up:
>
> https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/us/makeshift-morgues-coronavirus-new-york/index.html
>
>
>> For the first time since 9/11, NYC has set up makeshift morgues. This
>> time, it's in anticipation of coronavirus deaths
>
> Nice.  And Trump, of course, isn't going to be much help (read: none) to
> blue states because they don't vote for him.  I don't know what our
> resident fake lawyer calls this but I call it second degree murder.  Fun
> stuff.

But, of course, when 4 Americans died in Benghazi! (tm), we needed 9
hearings, and 2 years of investigations.

And that was for 4 people who KNEW they were in harm's way, and accepted
the risks.
Yesterday, he was saying 100,000,000 deaths would be a good scenario.

Jesus, but if I hear any Democrats spouting any Obama-era bullshit about
"looking forward, and not back", I'll vomit in their face.

--
Donald Trump on COVID-19: "When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a
couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty
good job we've done... especially with the fact that we’re going down,
not up.” We’re going very substantially down, not up." (3-27-20: 95,000
confirmed cases and 1,500 deaths.)

Trump: "No, I don't take responsibility at all." - 3/13/20
Trump: "I happen to feel good about it, but who knows. I’ve been right a
lot." - 3/20/20

[trotsky]

On 3/30/2020 4:09 PM, FPP wrote:
> On 3/30/20 8:20 AM, trotsky wrote:
>> Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
>> and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
>> office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
>> coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still.  Lack of testing, lack
>> of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks), lack of
>> ventilators, and the lack of a leader who gives a shit or even has
>> vaguely enough intelligence to deal with this is causing the dead
>> bodies to literally stack up:
>>
>> https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/us/makeshift-morgues-coronavirus-new-york/index.html
>>
>>
>>> For the first time since 9/11, NYC has set up makeshift morgues. This
>>> time, it's in anticipation of coronavirus deaths
>>
>> Nice.  And Trump, of course, isn't going to be much help (read: none)
>> to blue states because they don't vote for him.  I don't know what our
>> resident fake lawyer calls this but I call it second degree murder.
>> Fun stuff.
>
> But, of course, when 4 Americans died in Benghazi! (tm), we needed 9
> hearings, and 2 years of investigations.
>
> And that was for 4 people who KNEW they were in harm's way, and accepted
> the risks.
> Yesterday, he was saying 100,000,000 deaths would be a good scenario.
>
> Jesus, but if I hear any Democrats spouting any Obama-era bullshit about
> "looking forward, and not back", I'll vomit in their face.

Me too.

[thinbl...@gmail.com]

On Monday, March 30, 2020 at 5:09:49 PM UTC-4, FPP wrote:
> On 3/30/20 8:20 AM, trotsky wrote:
> > Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
> > and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
> > office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
> > coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still.  Lack of testing, lack of
> > PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks), lack of
> > ventilators, and the lack of a leader who gives a shit or even has
> > vaguely enough intelligence to deal with this is causing the dead bodies
> > to literally stack up:
> >
> > https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/us/makeshift-morgues-coronavirus-new-york/index.html
> >
> >
> >> For the first time since 9/11, NYC has set up makeshift morgues. This
> >> time, it's in anticipation of coronavirus deaths
> >
> > Nice.  And Trump, of course, isn't going to be much help (read: none) to
> > blue states because they don't vote for him.  I don't know what our
> > resident fake lawyer calls this but I call it second degree murder.  Fun
> > stuff.



> But, of course, when 4 Americans died in Benghazi! (tm), we needed 9
> hearings, and 2 years of investigations.


> And that was for 4 people who KNEW they were in harm's way, and accepted
> the risks.

Chris Stevens first stop in Benghazi the day before he died, was the CIA military outpost tasked with running guns across the Mediterranean Sea through Turkey to Syrian rebels tasked with destroying Israel's neighbor to the north.

The Benghazi hearings were never set up to reveal the truth about the attack, that's why we were told the heathens in Libya were riled up by a youtube video.

The hearings were resolved for all intents and purposes when HRC ended her testimony with a blue and white plane reference. That's who she represented. The closer the hearings got to the truth, the bigger the lies.

Except for the very end of HRC's secret coded testimony.

Once gubmint officials commit to a covert operation, they will lie continuously to protect the true nature of the mission.

And they did.



---------------

We return you now to your regularly scheduled programming in progress:

“I don't think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center”



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_operations_and_exercises_on_September_11,_2001#Planned_military_exercises

[kensi]

On 3/30/2020 8:20 AM, trotsky wrote:
> Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
> and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
> office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
> coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still.  Lack of testing, lack of
> PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks), lack of
> ventilators, and the lack of a leader who gives a shit or even has
> vaguely enough intelligence to deal with this is causing the dead bodies
> to literally stack up:
>
> https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/us/makeshift-morgues-coronavirus-new-york/index.html
>
>> For the first time since 9/11, NYC has set up makeshift morgues. This
>> time, it's in anticipation of coronavirus deaths
>
> Nice.  And Trump, of course, isn't going to be much help (read: none) to
> blue states because they don't vote for him.  I don't know what our
> resident fake lawyer calls this but I call it second degree murder.  Fun
> stuff.

I call it genocide.

LOCK HIM UP!

--
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain
the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy." ~David Brooks
"I get fooled all the time by the constant hosiery parade
in here." ~Checkmate

[thinbl...@gmail.com]

On Monday, March 30, 2020 at 5:47:10 PM UTC-4, thinbl...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, March 30, 2020 at 5:09:49 PM UTC-4, FPP wrote:
> > On 3/30/20 8:20 AM, trotsky wrote:
> > > Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
> > > and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
> > > office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
> > > coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still.  Lack of testing, lack of
> > > PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks), lack of
> > > ventilators, and the lack of a leader who gives a shit or even has
> > > vaguely enough intelligence to deal with this is causing the dead bodies
> > > to literally stack up:
> > >
> > > https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/us/makeshift-morgues-coronavirus-new-york/index.html
> > >
> > >
> > >> For the first time since 9/11, NYC has set up makeshift morgues. This
> > >> time, it's in anticipation of coronavirus deaths
> > >
> > > Nice.  And Trump, of course, isn't going to be much help (read: none) to
> > > blue states because they don't vote for him.  I don't know what our
> > > resident fake lawyer calls this but I call it second degree murder.  Fun
> > > stuff.





> > But, of course, when 4 Americans died in Benghazi! (tm), we needed 9
> > hearings, and 2 years of investigations.


> > And that was for 4 people who KNEW they were in harm's way, and accepted
> > the risks.


> Chris Stevens first stop in Benghazi the day before he died, was the CIA military outpost

> We return you now to your regularly scheduled programming in progress:



> “I don't think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center”

Aside from military exercises, a National Reconnaissance Office drill was being conducted on September 11, 2001.

In a simulated event, a small aircraft would crash into one of the towers of the agency's headquarters after experiencing a mechanical failure. The NRO is the branch of the Department of Defense in charge of spy satellites.

According to its spokesman Art Haubold: "No actual plane was to be involved -- to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building."

He further explained: "It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_operations_and_exercises_on_September_11,_2001#National_Reconnaissance_Office_drill




-----------------


failure of imagination <wink>

https://vimeo.com/117123792

[Ubiquitous]

"trotsky" wrote:

>Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
>and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
>office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
>coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still. Lack of testing, lack of
>PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks),

Well, there you go trying to blame President Trump for Obama's screwups
again...

The claim: The Obama administration used and did not replenish the
nation's emergency stockpile of medical supplies, including N95 masks
As the novel coronavirus pandemic strains health care systems,
questions around the U.S. government's response have circulated in the
media and online.

On March 26, The Daily Wire published an article centering on the Obama
administration's role in using and allegedly failing to replenish the
federal stockpile of N95 masks.

"The Obama administration significantly depleted the federal stockpile
of N95 respirator masks to deal with the H1N1 influenza outbreak in
2009 and never rebuilt the stockpile despite calls to do so," the piece
begins.

The article draws from the reporting of outlets including Bloomberg
News and the Los Angeles Times. According to Bloomberg News, "after the
H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, which triggered a nationwide shortage
of masks and caused a 2- to 3-year backlog orders for the N95 variety,
the stockpile distributed about three-quarters of its inventory and
didn't build back the supply."

"After the swine flu epidemic in 2009, a safety-equipment industry
association and a federally sponsored task force both recommended that
depleted supplies of N95 respirator masks, which filter out airborne
particles, be replenished by the stockpile," the Los Angeles Times
reported.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said during a press conference the
country's stockpile of personal protective equipment, including medical
gear like N95 masks, is almost depleted.

A history of the national emergency stockpile
Established in 1999 to prepare the country for threats like pandemics,
natural disasters and acts of bioterrorism, the United States has used
and maintained its Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies
during times of acute crisis in the health care system.

The reserve was originally named the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile,
but was renamed during a 2003 restructuring when additional materials
were added to the supply. The stockpile is jointly managed by the
departments of Defense and Health and Human Services.

While officials rarely discuss specifics about the reserve, like the
exact locations and value of its contents, the fund's restocking
contracts are largely public, including a July 2019 deal for vaccines
valued at $1.5 billion.

Warnings about the United States' lack of preparedness for a serious
pandemic have come from both inside the federal government and
elsewhere since at least the early 2000s and as recently as last year.

"SARS has infected relatively few people nationwide, but it has raised
concerns about preparedness for large-scale infectious disease
outbreaks," a 2003 analysis from the Government Accountability Office
reads.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in April 2019 the BioDefense Summit that a
pandemic was among his top concerns, CNN reported on Friday. "Of
course, the thing that people ask: 'What keeps you most up at night in
the biodefense world?' Pandemic flu, of course. I think everyone in
this room probably shares that concern," Azar told the summit. (His
full remarks are available on the HHS website.)

The stockpile has been used at least 13 times since its creation,
including during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and 2001 anthrax
attacks. Also during the George W. Bush administration, the national
stockpile was deployed in response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita in
2005 and then again for Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008, according to
the stockpile's history published by the HHS.

In 2005, the Bush administration published a report that urged
investment in local and national stockpiles, increasing domestic
production capacity and coordinating research efforts toward cures and
vaccines. In 2006, Congress approved expanding the stockpile to include
protective gear like N95 surgical masks.

During the presidency of Barack Obama, the national stockpile was
seriously taxed as the administration addressed multiple crises over
eight years. About "75 percent of N95 respirators and 25 percent of
face masks contained in the CDC's Strategic National Stockpile (~100
million products) were deployed for use in health care settings over
the course of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic response," according to a 2017
study in the journal Health Security.

Again according to NIH, the stockpile's resources were also used during
hurricanes Alex, Irene, Isaac and Sandy. Flooding in 2010 in North
Dakota also called for stockpile funds to be deployed. The 2014
outbreaks of the ebola virus and botulism, as well as the 2016 outbreak
of the zika virus, continued to significantly tax the stockpile with no
serious effort from the Obama administration to replenish the fund.

ProPublica reported on April 3 that congressional budget battles in the
early years of the Obama administration contributed to stockpile
shortages. But the article notes available funds were used not to
replenish masks: "With limited resources, officials in charge of the
stockpile tend to focus on buying lifesaving drugs from small
biotechnology firms that would, in the absence of a government buyer,
have no other market for their products, experts said. Masks and other
protective equipment are in normal times widely available and thus may
not have been prioritized for purchase, they said."

During the presidency of Donald Trump, analysts have warned the United
States is not prepared for a serious pandemic.

"We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable
to the next flu pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious
disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability,
severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and
increase calls on the United States for support," the 2019 World Threat
Assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
states.

The Trump administration has not taken significant steps to replenish
the masks in the Strategic National Stockpile.

Our rating: True
We rate this claim TRUE because it is supported by our research. There
is no indication that the Obama administration took significant steps
to replenish the supply of N95 masks in the Strategic National
Stockpile after it was depleted from repeated crises. Calls for action
came from experts at the time concerned for the country's ability to
respond to future serious pandemics. Such recommendations were, for
whatever reason, not heeded.

Our fact-check sources:

• Department of Health and Human Services, Strategic National
Stockpile: History
• Government Accountability Office, 2003 Report on Public Health Capacity
• Health Security, Personal Protective Equipment Supply Chain: Lessons
Learned from Recent Public Health Emergency Responses
• Homeland Security Council, 2005 National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza
• National Institute of Health, The Strategic National Stockpile:
Origin, Policy Foundations, and Federal Context
• 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community

--
Every American should want President Trump and his administration to
handle the coronavirus epidemic effectively and successfully. Those who
seem eager to see the president fail and to call every administration
misstep a fiasco risk letting their partisanship blind them to the
demands not only of civic responsibility but of basic decency.

[RichA]

Oh dear! "Make-shift" morgues! HowEVER will the corpses live it down!
Plus, good luck as a manufacturing executive, in your next life.

[FPP]

On 4/3/20 9:05 PM, Ubiquitous wrote:
> "trotsky" wrote:
>
>> Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
>> and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
>> office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
>> coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still. Lack of testing, lack of
>> PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks),
> Well, there you go trying to blame President Trump for Obama's screwups
> again...

Let's be clear. Trump has been in power for more than 3 years. The
failures are his.

Let's be clear, the Republicans had full control of Congress for the
first 2 of those 3 years. The failures are theirs also.

Trump says he know the stockpiles were low? Then why the fuck didn't he
fix it? he had control of everything for 2 years.

We all know why. Because he's a failure at everything he's done, except
conning rubes like you.
He's about as successful at running the country as you have been to
redirect replies (like this one) outside of the group.

Grate job!

--
Trump's Coronavirus Response = Benghazi! (tm) X 50,000.

Donald Trump on COVID-19: "There will be a lot of death,
unfortunately..." 4-4-20

"When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to
be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done...
especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up.” We’re going

very substantially down, not up." (4-7-20: 370,000 confirmed cases and
11,000 deaths.)

[kensi]

On 4/3/2020 9:05 PM, Ubiquitous wrote:
> Our rating: True
> We rate this claim TRUE because it is supported by our research. There
> is no indication that the Obama administration took significant steps
> to replenish the supply of N95 masks in the Strategic National
> Stockpile after it was depleted from repeated crises.

There is, likewise, no indication that over the last three years the
Trump "administration" took significant steps to replenish the supply of
N95 masks in the Strategic National Stockpile.

Why?

[%]

On 2020-04-07 8:08 p.m., kensi wrote:
> On 4/3/2020 9:05 PM, Ubiquitous wrote:
>> Our rating: True
>> We rate this claim TRUE because it is supported by our research. There
>> is no indication that the Obama administration took significant steps
>> to replenish the supply of N95 masks in the Strategic National
>> Stockpile after it was depleted from repeated crises.
>
> There is, likewise, no indication that over the last three years the
> Trump "administration" took significant steps to replenish the supply of
> N95 masks in the Strategic National Stockpile.
>
> Why?
>

because

[Adam H. Kerman]

kensi <kkensi...@gmail.nospam.invalid> wrote:
>On 4/3/2020 9:05 PM, Ubiquitous wrote:

>>Our rating: True
>>We rate this claim TRUE because it is supported by our research. There
>>is no indication that the Obama administration took significant steps
>>to replenish the supply of N95 masks in the Strategic National
>>Stockpile after it was depleted from repeated crises.

>There is, likewise, no indication that over the last three years the
>Trump "administration" took significant steps to replenish the supply of
>N95 masks in the Strategic National Stockpile.

>Why?

It's too bad seamussocks are all so holey. Can you imagine the number of
masks that could be made out of them?

[MK]

"%" <per...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:d2g52d....@news.alt.net...

We don't need it anymore. Everyone except libtards, negroes, and Hasidic
Jews in the Bronx are dying, because they refuse to lock their ass down!

[%]

i'd like to help you but i'm not allowed in the usa

[KWills Shill #2]

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 23:08:41 -0400, kensi
<kkensi...@gmail.nospam.invalid> wrote:

>On 4/3/2020 9:05 PM, Ubiquitous wrote:
>> Our rating: True
>> We rate this claim TRUE because it is supported by our research. There
>> is no indication that the Obama administration took significant steps
>> to replenish the supply of N95 masks in the Strategic National
>> Stockpile after it was depleted from repeated crises.
>
>There is, likewise, no indication that over the last three years the
>Trump "administration" took significant steps to replenish the supply of
>N95 masks in the Strategic National Stockpile.
>
>Why?

Obviously he was thinking as a Democrat. That's why.

--
Only one shopping day left until tomorrow!

[The Right And The Powerful]

Help her with what?

[Ubiquitous]

"trotsky" wrote:

>Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
>and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
>office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
>coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still. Lack of testing, lack of
>PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks),

Well, there you go trying to blame President Trump for Obama's screwups
again...

President Trump’s response to the coronavirus may not be perfect, no
pandemic response can be but make no mistake about it, Obama would have
seriously botched the coronavirus pandemic, and I can give you six
solid reasons why.


6. Obama failed to restock the Strategic National Stockpile after H1N1


Obama’s failures during the H1N1 pandemic had consequences for the
current coronavirus pandemic because in 2009 the Obama administration
depleted the Strategic National Stockpile of N95 respirators and never
replenished the stockpile during the remainder of his presidency.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “After the swine flu epidemic in

2009, a safety-equipment industry association and a federally sponsored
task force both recommended that depleted supplies of N95 respirator

masks [...] be replenished by the stockpile.” The problem is that
didn’t happen. According to Charles Johnson, president of the
International Safety Equipment Association, about 100 million N95
respirator masks were used up during the swine flu pandemic of 2009-
2010, but, he said was unaware of any “major effort to restore the
stockpile to cover that drawdown.”

In fact, the Obama Administration ignored at least 3 government reports
in which "federal officials predicted the United States would
experience a critical lack of ventilators" during a global pandemic.

If Obama couldn’t be bothered to replenish the Strategic National
Stockpile after depleting it in the first place and then ignoring
multiple warnings about it, how exactly does that translate into “Obama
would do a better job with the coronavirus”?


5. Obama waited months to declare H1N1 a national emergency


Barack Obama's Department of Health and Human Services declared the
H1N1 pandemic a "national health emergency" on April 29, 2009, but
didn’t declare it a "national emergency" until October. That's two
months after the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic. A
thousand Americans had already died due to the H1N1 virus at this
point. It can’t be a coincidence that Obama finally declared H1N1 a
national emergency just days before a congressional oversight panel
slammed the Obama administration’s response to the pandemic as
inadequate and incomplete. "Our early warning and detection systems
were inadequate," Rep. Yvette Clark, (D-NY) said of the government's
response. "Some key planning activities were incomplete; we didn't have
a good approach to provide health care under pandemic conditions; and
levels of preparedness for pandemic influenza were unclear.
Unfortunately, our failure to develop these systems, activities and
policies cost us during the response."


4. Obama didn’t implement any travel bans during H1N1


The H1N1 outbreak originated in Mexico. Despite calls from members of
Congress to do so, the Obama administration refused to restrict travel
with Mexico or close the border. "Closing our nation's borders is not
merited here," said Obama’s DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano when a
national health emergency was declared. She argued that closing the
border or U.S. ports would have "no impact or very little" in stopping
or slowing the spread of the virus.

Trump proved this theory wrong when he took the bold step of banning
travel from China back in January. He got criticized for it, but a
month later WHO experts conceded that it worked and it saved lives.
While countries like Italy and Iran were experiencing catastrophic
outbreaks, the United States was not. Even Joe Biden has flip-flopped
on this, he now supports the travel ban with China after previously
calling it "xenophobic."

If Trump’s decision to close travel with China saved lives, then
Obama’s decision not to close travel with Mexico during the H1N1
pandemic cost lives. Remember, the H1N1 pandemic resulted in 60.8
million infections and over 12,000 deaths. Imagine how much lower those
numbers would have been had Obama been more like Trump.

As for the coronavirus, there’s no doubt in my mind that Obama would
not have banned travel with China or waited much, much longer to do so.


3. Obama’s H1N1 pandemic response was plagued by vaccine shortages


In addition to being ill-prepared, the Obama administration failed to
achieve its vaccine production goals. The New York Times reported in
January 2010 that the Obama administration “predicted in early summer
[2009] that it would have 160 million vaccine doses by late October,”
but that “it ended up with less than 30 million,” leading to a public
outcry and congressional investigations.

This failure undoubtedly cost lives. A study by Purdue University
scholars published on October 15, 2009 (before Obama declared the
national emergency) determined that the H1N1 vaccine would arrive “too
late to help most Americans who will be infected during this flu
season.” The study determined that the CDC’s planned vaccination
campaign would “likely not have a large effect on the total number of
people ultimately infected by the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus.”


2. Obama cut funding to the NIH


Remember how Democrats like Joe Biden falsely claimed that Trump cut
funding to CDC and the NIH? Guess who actually did cut funding for the
NIH? Yup, Barack Obama. Analysis from the Cato Institute found that
“Real NIH spending soared from the mid-?1990s to 2011. It was then cut
under President Obama but has rebounded under President Trump. Real CDC
spending soared from around 1990 to 2010 but has been roughly flat
since then.”

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs/public/2020-
03/cdc%201.png

As for the CDC, Trump has been criticized for requesting cuts to the
CDC, but, the Obama administration did as well.:

•FY 2013: $569 million

•FY 2014: $270 million

•FY 2015: $414 million

•FY 2017: $251 million

Some of the cuts sought by Barack Obama "specifically took aim at the
CDC's preparedness initiatives." The Wall Street Journal reported in
2012 that "President Obama’s 2012 budget calls for paring some of that
spending. Funding for a public health emergency preparedness program
run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was cut by about
$72 million below fiscal 2010 levels in the budget proposal."


1. Obama actually did dissolve the White House pandemic office in 2009


It wasn’t all that long ago that the media falsely blamed Trump for
“dissolving” the White House pandemic response office in 2018. The
claim was quickly debunked, but here’s something you probably didn’t
hear about. Barack Obama actually did eliminate the White House
pandemic response office in 2009, the same year as the H1N1 pandemic.

In fact, there was no dedicated anti-pandemic unit at the White House
National Security Council until one was created in the final months of
the Obama administration—seven years after the H1N1 pandemic started,
and two years after the Ebola epidemic. Barack Obama’s response to the
H1N1 pandemic was slow, and plagued by vaccine shortages. His response
to the 2014 Ebola outbreak was also plagued with problems —which
apparently convinced him to re-open the office two years later.

: Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump
: Saved Us From Barack Obama's Legacy and the bestselling book The
: Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama.

[FPP]

On 4/8/20 8:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
> "trotsky" wrote:
>
>> Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
>> and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
>> office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
>> coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still. Lack of testing, lack of
>> PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks),
> Well, there you go trying to blame President Trump for Obama's screwups
> again...

Obama left Trump with a Pandemic Playbook. Trump tore it up, and used
it to wipe his nasty ass with it.

If Obama was president, we'd be talking about the weather today.

[Ubiquitous]

"trotsky" wrote:

>Let's be clear about Trump's utter failure in response to the pandemic
>and the complicity of the Republican Party from letting him stay in
>office: The U.S. is roughly three months behind on dealing with the
>coronavirus crisis, and sinking further still. Lack of testing, lack of
>PPE (Personal Protective Equipment such as face masks),

Well, there you go trying to blame President Trump for Obama's screwups
again...

It was April 2009 and the 3-month-old Obama administration was
desperately grappling with the worst economic collapse since the Great
Depression when homeland security adviser John Brennan arrived at the
Oval Office to warn the president and Vice President Joe Biden of a new
crisis: H1N1, the swine flu virus, was showing signs of rapid spread in
Mexico, while cases were popping up in California and Texas.

Brennan pointed out that the Spanish flu — the deadliest pandemic in
U.S. history — was an H1N1 strain. “It made their eyebrows go up,”
Brennan says now, recalling Biden’s reaction in particular.

“‘Listen, we need to be aggressive early on this,’” Biden announced,
according to Brennan.


The next week, Biden made good on his pledge — and set off a deluge of
criticism. In an interview on NBC’s “Today,” Biden said he wouldn’t
advise his family to fly on planes or ride the subway.

“I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places right now," Biden said.
"It’s not that it’s going to Mexico, it’s that you are in a confined
aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the
aircraft.”

Airlines angrily accused Biden of fearmongering. Media reports noted
that Biden’s pessimism contrasted sharply with the reassurances
President Barack Obama had given a day earlier, when he said there was
no need to panic even as he declared a national health emergency. In a
matter of hours, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano and Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew were
summoned to the White House and assigned to clean up the mess Biden
made: “Nip it in the bud,” LaHood said, recalling their instructions.

By 4 p.m., the three officials were hosting a news conference and
backing away from the vice president’s words.

The snafu was the first of many scrambles and setbacks by the Obama
administration in its initial response to the swine flu. POLITICO
interviewed almost two dozen people, including administration
officials, members of Congress and outsiders who contended with the
administration’s response, and they described a litany of sadly
familiar obstacles: vaccine shortfalls, fights over funding and
sometimes contradictory messaging.

“It is purely a fortuity that this isn’t one of the great mass casualty
events in American history,” Ron Klain, who was Biden’s chief of staff
at the time, said of H1N1 in 2019. “It had nothing to do with us doing
anything right. It just had to do with luck. If anyone thinks that this
can’t happen again, they don’t have to go back to 1918, they just have
to go back to 2009, 2010 and imagine a virus with a different
lethality, and you can just do the math on that.”

Over the course of a year, the H1N1 flu infected 60 million Americans,
but claimed only 12,469 lives, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.

Klain now says his comments, which were made at a biosecurity summit,
referred solely to the administration’s difficulties in producing
enough of an H1N1 vaccine to meet public demand. The Obama team, he
says, quickly adapted to the situation, making choices that were
starkly different from those the Trump administration would make 11
years later, such as quickly distributing emergency equipment from the
federal stockpile, deferring to public health experts and having them
take the lead on messaging.

Now, as Biden prepares to take on President Donald Trump in a
presidential election marked by a far more lethal pandemic, Klain and
other Biden intimates have seized on the idea that the former vice
president is the man for this moment. Having played pivotal roles in
the government’s response to H1N1 and Ebola, Biden himself has insisted
he is uniquely equipped to confront the coronavirus pandemic. Obama,
too, lauded Biden’s contributions.

“Joe helped me manage H1N1 and prevent the Ebola epidemic from becoming
the type of pandemic we're seeing now,” Obama said in endorsing Biden.

But an extensive review of the handling of H1N1, including the
examination of public records and congressional testimony, suggests the
response was not the panacea portrayed by the Biden camp and its
defenders: Biden’s role, while significant, was not equivalent to
leading the response. He was the administration’s main liaison to
governors and Congress and succeeded in securing funding from skeptical
leaders. Biden’s attempt at messaging, via the “Today” interview,
proved that he, at least, took the threat of a pandemic very seriously.
But by issuing warnings that others in the administration weren’t
prepared to endorse, he contributed to a muddled message.

Biden declined to comment, but former officials described a White
House, still in its infancy, bogged down by seismic economic challenges
and struggling to keep its signature promise for a universal health
care plan. With a Health and Human Services Department still bereft of
more than a dozen officials — including the Cabinet secretary — the
Obama team now had a fast-moving pandemic with unknown lethality
bearing down on them.

After an initial run of problems — including an inability to contain
the virus and slower-than-expected development of a vaccine — they say
they learned quickly and generated a better response both in the later
stages of H1N1 and then, five years later, in confronting the much more
lethal Ebola virus.

They listened to the scientists. They got Congress on board. They put
experts out in front of the public. And they righted messaging,
adopting an acronym that would serve as a linchpin in averting future
snafus: PTFOTV — Put Tony Fauci on TV.

A Killer of Children
H1N1 entered the U.S. population at the opposite end of the age
spectrum as the novel coronavirus: The most vulnerable people were
under 30, a realization that would come to worry parents across the
country.

In one CDC study, children between the ages of 5 and 14 were found to
be 14 times more likely to be infected than those 60 or older.

The first case emerged on April 15, when a 10-year-old in California
tested positive for a virus “unknown to humans,” according to a CDC
analysis. Two days later, an 8-year-old in another part of California
tested positive for the same virus. The two children had no known
contact.

While the CDC began to assess the significance of this development,
Obama was in Mexico making a ritual courtesy call on then-President
Felipe Calderón. Brennan was part of Obama’s entourage. At one point,
Obama, Brennan and others in the visiting party went to Mexico City’s
famed anthropological museum for a private tour by the director.

A week later, the museum director, Felipe Solis, died of flu-like
symptoms. While his ailment was initially thought to be H1N1, doctors
later surmised that he had suffered from an unrelated form of
pneumonia. But the notion that a famous man who had just spent hours
with the president might have carried the mystery virus served to
underscore its risks.

The CDC quickly began trying to replicate the virus in a way that would
lead to a vaccine — a process that was far more advanced for flu than
coronaviruses. On April 25, just a few days after Brennan gave his Oval
Office briefing to Obama and Biden, the World Health Organization
declared a public health emergency. A day later, Obama did the same,
triggering a release of supplies from the national stockpile, including
antiviral drugs, personal protective equipment and respirators. On
April 28, two days after Obama declared the emergency, the FDA approved
an H1N1 test.

That same day, Obama’s health team finally got a leader, as the Senate
confirmed Kathleen Sebelius as HHS secretary.

The 60-year-old Sebelius had won the job after Obama’s first pick,
former Sen. Tom Daschle, withdrew from consideration in early February
because of tax issues. A former governor of Kansas, Sebelius believed
her first challenge would be to dramatically expand health insurance
coverage, a task that would require both political armor and acumen.

But after her Senate confirmation, Sebelius was escorted into the White
House Situation Room, where Brennan and White House chief of staff Rahm
Emanuel awaited her. They had a more immediate challenge in mind:
defeating H1N1.

“Don't worry about health care legislation, don’t worry about anything
[else],” Emanuel said he told Sebelius. “This is target number one.”

Brennan and Emanuel stressed to Sebelius that “we got to get our hands
around” the severity of the virus “to minimize the public health threat
and a potential loss of life,” according to Emanuel.

The first U.S. death came on the next day, April 29. It was a 23-
month-old child in Texas.

Obama and Biden were at a White House news event celebrating the
decision by Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Arlen Specter, to switch
parties. Before joining Biden in heaping praise on Specter, the
president turned to the H1N1 issue.

Obama announced that he had requested $1.5 billion in emergency
funding, saying it would “ensure that we have adequate supplies of
vaccines and the equipment to handle a potential outbreak.” He had
already urged schools to consider closing if they had confirmed or
suspected cases of H1N1.

“I can assure you that we will be vigilant in monitoring the progress
of this flu,” Obama said, “and I will make every judgment based on the
best science available.”

Obama, seeking to learn from his predecessors’ experiences, invited
members of the Ford administration to visit the White House and discuss
their own fateful dance with the swine flu in 1976, when a variant of
H1N1 broke out on a U.S. military base and President Gerald Ford
ordered a nationwide vaccination program.

Inside the Roosevelt Room, a windowless expanse with a large conference
table for meetings, F. David Mathews, Ford’s health secretary, and
William Taft IV, who had served as general counsel for the health
department, held forth. Taft, the great-grandson of the 27th president,
said he told Obama it was important to get Congress on board early “and
to keep them on board, because that had been very helpful to us in
’76.”

Mathews offered additional advice: “When people get sick, they want to
talk to the doctor. Let the health people take the lead in this,”
Mathews said he told Obama. “You be supportive, but you’ve got good
doctors, you’ve got a good system here, rely on them.”

Mathews and Taft were so fixated on the new president that they can’t
remember whether the new vice president, who was already a familiar
Washington hand in the Ford days, attended the meeting. But Biden’s
four decades of contacts would prove useful in implementing Taft’s
advice to get Congress on board.

Obama faced a deceptively difficult struggle with Congress. Few in the
House or Senate understood the dangers of pandemics. Democratic
leaders, having finished a massive stimulus two months earlier, were
setting their sights on priorities like health care reform and reducing
carbon emissions. Republicans, meanwhile, were massing in opposition to
the administration’s spending plans, feeling bruised by what they saw
as Obama’s attempt to cram unrelated Democratic priorities into the
stimulus bill, which was supposed to provide a short-term jolt to the
economy.

For this complicated task, he knew whom to dispatch: the vice
president.

Biden Reassures Governors and Senators
Even after his comments on “Today” blew up, Biden remained attentive to
the H1N1 issue, attending almost all the briefings for Obama and other
top officials, Brennan recalled.

One aide involved in the H1N1 response said even if Biden wasn’t
present at meetings, his interests were made known. “It was often: ‘The
vice president wants to know X, Y or Z,’” the aide said.

But as usual, the affable Biden was most active behind the scenes,
serving as Obama’s ambassador to political leaders across the country.
Governors were particularly apprehensive about H1N1 as they began
looking ahead to a new school year a few months hence. Klain recalls
that Sebelius would refer local officials who were impatient or
frustrated with some aspect of the administration’s response to Biden
for a pep talk.

Indeed, the vice president was on the horn every time a local bigwig
needed to “speak to someone important at the White House,” Klain said.
Biden was proactive as well, delivering an H1N1 briefing to a
conference of governors at which he took questions and offered guidance
from the CDC.

“It was scary, I think a lot of people were apprehensive,” said former
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, who recalled Biden’s briefing. “He was the
kind of the guy, you tell him what you need and he was very receptive,
personable. He was always available. If you needed something you could
always call him.”

In June, the WHO declared H1N1 a global flu pandemic, the first such
declaration in 41 years.

"He was the kind of the guy, you tell him what you need
and he was very receptive, personable. He was always
available.”

Former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn

Fauci, who had been the nation’s infectious disease chief since the
Reagan administration, predicted a dangerous surge in infections once
school was back in session, necessitating more money for vaccines,
medical supplies and overall preparedness.

Obama asked Biden, who already served as the administration’s
unofficial liaison to the Senate, to meet with congressional leaders to
lobby for nearly $9 billion.

“During the meeting, something came up, someone tapped Obama on his
shoulder and he had to leave,” recalled then-Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “Biden wound up running the meeting and making the
case for more money. From that point forward, he basically took over on
the swine flu deal.”

Biden laid out the potential dangers ahead, stressing the need to
quickly ramp up on vaccine development, according to an aide in the
room at the time. Democrats were receptive. Republican opposition had
played a role in blocking the administration’s request for pandemic
funding in the stimulus bill, before H1N1 even appeared. Now, with
children vulnerable to infection, that opposition melted away.

The supplemental funding bill came through, to the tune of nearly $8
billion.

The Torturous Road to a Vaccine
Even as federal money was flowing into vaccine development, government
scientists were starting to see a problem: The H1N1 virus was taking
longer to grow in eggs — the method of producing a mutated version of
the virus for a vaccine — than the seasonal flu.

That meant there would be a lag in preparing the seed stocks of virus
that manufacturers needed to start production. But the Obama
administration made a significant mistake: Sebelius’ team at HHS
nonetheless announced that if all went as planned, they should have 100
million doses ready for use by mid-October. That was consistent with
promises made by the vaccine manufacturers, who had actually contracted
for 120 million doses by October, but before the delays in the seed
stocks.

All did not go as planned.

The slowness in growing the virus needed for the vaccine was compounded
by a range of additional setbacks, including repeated glitches in
manufacturing the drug.

There were also mistakes in establishing a proper dose, with an initial
protocol calling for two rounds of the vaccine. It turned out that was
recommended only for children 10 and younger.

Sebelius declined to comment, but Nicole Lurie, who served as HHS
assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said there were two
components to the delay: “One was, the vaccine rolled out slowly
because of some production issues. Stuff always goes wrong. The other,
people wanted it faster than they could get it.”

Indeed, flu season was approaching, and local officials — not to
mention parents who were sending their children to crowded classrooms —
demanded protection.

The Obama administration backed off the promise of 100 million doses by
October but pegged the number at 40 million.

By mid-October, however, when the demand for the vaccine was at its
highest, supply fell dramatically short, with as few as 11 million
doses on hand, according to one report.

At this point, about 22 million Americans had been infected with H1N1,
540 children had died and 36,000 children had been hospitalized,
according to CDC estimates at the time.

HHS rolled out guidelines that vulnerable people should receive
priority for the vaccinations.

Compounding the supply setbacks was the form of the initial vaccination
shipments: Almost all of it was nasal spray, which could not be used by
some in the highest-risk groups, like children with asthma and pregnant
women.

When reports circulated of an impending shortage of supply, demand
soared. Parents rushed their children to doctor’s offices. Soon, lines
for the vaccine stretched for blocks in cities across the country,
including Los Angeles and New York.

“There were long lines,” Lurie said. “If there is a shortage of
something, it seems people really want it. Once it was widely
available, there was less interest. That was one of those things.”

State health officials and doctors grew exasperated as their orders
failed to come in on time. California, for instance, reported that by
November it had received only half the number of vaccines it had
ordered and feared it couldn’t cover even vulnerable populations.

Perpetuating the shortages were states like New York, which required
all of its health workers to receive the shots. As the supplies lagged,
however, New York lifted the requirement.

On Oct. 23, CDC Director Tom Frieden apologized for the snafus: “What
we have learned more in the last couple of weeks is that not only is
the virus unpredictable, but vaccine production is much less
predictable than we wish. We are nowhere near where we thought we'd be
by now. We are not near where the vaccine manufacturers predicted we
would be. We share the frustration of people who have waited on line or
called a number or checked a website and haven't been able to find a
place to get vaccinated.”

Eventually, the U.S. was swamped with the H1N1 vaccine. But most of it
arrived after flu season had peaked and demand had died down.

“We had great scientists working on the vaccine. We had all kinds of
people working on logistics. But in the end, the vaccine did not arrive
in time,” Klain explained. “The vast majority of H1N1 cases we had in
America happened before the vaccine was available.”

Testifying before a congressional panel in November 2009, Fauci
acknowledged the administration had created false expectations, but he
blamed the surprising slowness of the virus growth.

“We had great scientists working on the vaccine. We had all
kinds of people working on logistics. But in the end, the
vaccine did not arrive in time."

Ron Klain, Biden's former chief of staff

“The drug companies in good faith contracted with the government to get
a certain amount of doses for the flu season,” Fauci said during a Nov.
4, 2009, congressional hearing at which officials were asked to explain
vaccine shortages. “With that comes benchmarks when you think they’ll
be delivered. The fact that they’re not has to do with what we’ve said
over and over again … that the virus doesn’t grow very well. It’s just
the nature of the biology of the virus that created an expectation that
we thought there would be a certain amount, that expectation was shared
with the American public and it’s a disappointment.”

Lessons Learned, Lessons Applied
By Obama’s second term, the H1N1 crisis was a distant memory. Klain had
left the White House in 2011 to take a job at Case Holdings, advising
AOL founder Steve Case on his business and charitable interests. But
then, in 2014, the specter of a pandemic loomed again.

Ebola, a deadly virus spread from bats to humans, appeared in West
Africa. Far less infectious than H1N1, Ebola was believed to be spread
through bodily fluids. It was also, however, far more deadly than H1N1.
In the United States, fears grew when a Dallas man who had recently
worked in Liberia died of the virus in early October and two nurses who
treated him became infected. Obama, already battling low favorability
ratings, was facing a firestorm of criticism over his handling of
Ebola.

At that point, with most of the infections still in Africa, Obama
tapped Klain to become his Ebola czar, managing both the public health
response and the diplomatic challenge in making sure foreign
governments did enough to contain the virus within their boundaries.

Shortly after returning to the White House, Klain found himself
breaking delicate news to Obama. A doctor named Craig Spencer, who had
volunteered to treat Ebola patients in the African nation of Guinea,
had tested positive for the disease in New York City.

“This is going to be the test,” Klain said he told Obama at the time.
“This was going to be a show-me moment.”

The test, in Klain’s view, related neither to public health nor
diplomacy. Trump, the New York businessman, had emerged as a leading
political provocateur, building a following by demanding ever-greater
evidence that Obama had been born in Hawaii, not Kenya, as Trump
claimed. Now, Ebola was striking Trump’s hometown, and he had a fresh
occasion to demand a travel ban on nations where the disease was
present. He fanned the flames just as the Obama administration was
trying to tamp down panic and reassure the public.

Trump’s demand extended to doctors and medical workers: If they chose
to go to those countries to treat patients, he argued, they shouldn’t
be allowed to return.

On Aug. 1, he tweeted: “The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people
back. People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must
suffer the consequences!” The next day, he wrote: “The U.S. must
immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the
plague will start and spread inside our ‘borders.’ Act fast!” And on
Aug. 8, he tweeted: “Same CDC which is bringing Ebola to US misplaced
samples of anthrax earlier this year… Be careful.”

For months, in the run-up to the 2014 midterms, Trump didn’t let up. In
October, he went after Obama personally. “I am starting to think that
there is something seriously wrong with President Obama's mental
health. Why won't he stop the flights. Psycho!”

Klain recalls that Trump’s attacks were effective: “A lot of the fears
that gripped this country, specifically in October and November in
2014, were stirred up by Trump’s tweets. If we were able to
successfully isolate and treat Dr. Spencer and no one got sick in that
process, and the disease did not transmit in New York, this, more than
anything else, would put an end to the Trump messaging on it.”

To keep Ebola from spreading further beyond Africa, the administration,
which already had dispatched 3,000 troops to West Africa to help
contain the spread, had to send public health workers to the affected
countries via commercial airlines. This would not be dangerous unless a
person was exposed to the blood or other bodily fluids of an Ebola
victim. But pilots, passengers, airport workers and others in American
cities from which the workers came and went had to be put at ease about
the possible spread of the contagion.

Having gone through the administration’s struggles with H1N1, Klain
understood how reassuring Fauci could be on TV.

“Everyone in my office knew what PTFOTV stood for: Put Tony Fauci on
TV,” Klain said. “We just had someone the president and vice president
trusted deeply, we knew he was a communicator that the American people
trusted.”

Fauci was dispatched to cable news shows. Employing another lesson of
the H1N1 days, Klain recruited the CDC's Frieden to join him in
briefings to add medical credibility to the administration’s
assertions.

Biden, Klain’s mentor, played an even larger role in Ebola than in
H1N1, using his personal persuasion to reassure pilots and airline
workers, Klain recalls. Biden also worked with governors in five states
where airports were regularly used to transport U.S. personnel and
equipment to Ebola-stricken countries.

Once again, Biden served as a conduit to Congress, helping push through
$5.4 billion in emergency funds. This was a tougher task than during
H1N1. The House was under Republican control, and much of the Ebola
money was heading overseas, to help contain the virus in Africa.

Lisa Monaco, who served as Obama’s homeland security and
counterterrorism adviser, remembered a notable exchange between Biden
and then-Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan when the African leader
visited the White House during the Ebola outbreak.

“The vice president was quite forceful with him to accelerate [his]
response,” Monaco said. “The message was: ‘We need you and your
government to really step up and do more on detection, surveillance and
tracing.’”

Jonathan obliged, she said.

Eventually, Dr. Spencer recovered and Ebola did not spread further in
the United States. Medical volunteers who had been infected in Africa
were allowed back in, and safely treated in U.S. hospitals without
further spread. Klain and the rest of the Obama team considered the
containment of Ebola to be a sharp rebuke to Trump’s ideas.

But in 2016, Trump surprised them yet again.

A Battle of Pandemic Responses
As he faces daily criticism of his response to the coronavirus — the
most severe pandemic in a century — Trump has tried to turn the
spotlight on the Obama-Biden administration’s handling of the swine
flu.

In tweets, cable news interviews and news briefings, Trump has
suggested Obama and Biden completely bungled the response.

On March 12, when there were only about 40 recorded coronavirus deaths
in the United States, Trump tweeted: “Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of
the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The
response was one of the worst on record. Our response is one of the
best, with fast action of border closings & a 78% Approval Rating, the
highest on record. His was lowest!”

Fact-checkers disputed Trump's assertions, noting that the two polls
measuring public approval of the Obama team’s response to H1N1 had
averaged a fairly robust 67 percent.

But the day after his initial tweet, Trump amplified the claims,
stating again on Twitter: “Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full
scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to
fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and
testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has
been cut, ready to go!”

Seven weeks later, Trump continues to face criticism for unkept
promises about the level of testing and his overly optimistic
projections about the rate of infections and deaths, while Democrats
claim Obama and Biden were quicker to grasp the seriousness of the
pandemic and mobilize the national stockpile and widespread testing.

“What really happened was that in the end in the course of a year
14,000 Americans died from H1N1, that’s what we’re seeing every week
from Covid,” Klain said. “We did prepare for H1N1, we did execute a
response from H1N1. That response included much more rapid testing than
what we’re seeing with Covid and a much more accelerated, professional
and medical-based response.”

Despite Trump’s assertions, few close observers of Obama’s and Biden’s
response to H1N1 consider it a “full scale disaster.” And Biden,
despite his early messaging problems, played a role in mobilizing the
administration and ensuring enough resources were devoted to defeating
the pandemic.

But the difficulties in mounting an effective response to H1N1, most
officials agree, still stand as a cautionary tale for future
administrations: Trump’s — and Biden’s, should he ever confront such a
situation again.

--
"It took a worldwide pandemic. It took a 35% plunge in the stock
market. It took quarantining. It took many small businesses closing. It
took canceling practically everything, to bring the USA economy back to
the Obama high mark."