Pandemic planning: Obama effort undone by Trump

Two things to consider:

1) President Obama created the Pandemic Preparedness Office in the National Security Council in 2016 after criticism from Republicans regarding his administration’s response to the Ebola crisis.

In 2018 President Trump disbanded it either to save money or because he hates all things Obama - who knows?

If this office had been in place, our nation would have begun to prepare a coherent federal response to the COVID-19 epidemic early in January. Instead we suffered an absence of federal leadership until a couple of weeks ago, turning a crisis into a catastrophe.

A real case of locking the barn door after the cows had gotten out.

2) I read much nonsense about closing off state or national boundaries to travel and commerce. Viruses know nothing about manmade artificial lines.

Any remedies to our situation must be holistic, not imaginary. This is about the interactions of populations, not the names of the places where they are located.

This story was originally published March 28, 2020 at 11:04 AM with the headline "Pandemic planning: Obama effort undone by Trump."