Mark Small

Time is past to discuss in sober fashion the “2 sides” - as if every issue has only 2 sides - of arguments about COVID-19. People with expertise have warned about this possibility - for years. The Federal government had tried to prepare for it. 2/16

Pres George W Bush read a book - seriously - while on vacation in 2005 about the Spanish Flu of 1918 and became alarmed about the prospects of a pandemic on that scale. 3/16

Bill Gates gave a “Ted” talk about the prospects in March, 2015. Too dry or deep because it was an intellectual talking? How about the 2011 movie “Contagion”? Wait, no car chases or shoot-outs. 1995's “Outbreak”? Disease was cured overnight. 4/16

Actually people from the last administration tried to brief those who were to follow, but hey, where’s the excitement about pandemics? Besides, golf outings take a lot of planning, and this administration has seen dt play a lot of golf. 5/16

A Rear Admiral who led the “global health security team” on the National Security Council (NSC) was asked to leave, in May 2018, the day after Nat’l Security Advisor John Bolton took office, and the team was disbanded. 6/16

This administration, according to Snopes, “axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it,” but noted Bolton headed NSC’s “chain of command at the time.” 7/16

3/3/20 FactCheck article titled “Democrats’ Misleading Coronavirus Claims”: lack of someone in White House to coordinate response to a widespread disease outbreak in U.S. is something numerous experts and groups at the time had cautioned against. 8/16

“In a November 2019 report, the Center for Strategic & International Studies recommended restoring the global health security position on the NSC as one of seven key changes to better protect the American public from global health threats. Id. 9/16