Trump says he can reassemble a health security team quickly (he can't)
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Trump says he can reassemble a health security team quickly (he can't)
President Donald Trump talks about preparedness to confront the coronavirus outbreak during a meeting with African-American leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House, on Feb. 27, 2020. Leah Millis / Reuters
As the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak continues to take shape, among the most important recent reports on the issue is this Foreign Policy piece from a month ago, which said the United States "has never been less prepared for a pandemic."
Of particular interest was the article shining a light on Donald Trump's May 2018 decision to order the shutdown of the White House National Security Council's entire global health security unit. NBC News had a good report on this, also, noting that the president's decision "to downsize the White House national security staff -- and eliminate jobs addressing global pandemics -- is likely to hamper the U.S. government's response to the coronavirus."
For his part, Trump doesn't deny the fact that he disbanded his global health security team and proposed cuts to programs intended to prevent the spread of infectious disease. Instead, the president has argued that he can simply reassemble the operation as needed.
"I'm a business person," he explained on Wednesday. "I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly."
That may sound sensible. It's not. The Washington Post reports today:
Former federal officials and public-health experts argue that an effective response to a epidemiological crisis demands sustained planning and investment. While the administration's response to coronavirus has been criticized in recent weeks as slow and disjointed, people in and outside the White House have warned for years that the nation is ill prepared for a dangerous pandemic.
Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told the Post , "You build a fire department ahead of time. You don't wait for a fire. There is an underappreciation for the amount of time and resources required to build a prepared system."
Georgetown's Don Moynihan had a good tweet along these lines the other day, adding , "I'm a public management professor: once you have gutted institutional capacity, you cannot, in fact, quickly restore it."
The president, who's never shown much of an interest in how government works or is supposed to function, seems wholly unaware of all of this. It's yet another reason to question the White House's competence and capacity as the public-health emergency continues.
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Actually the Trump is assembling his-----------response team. Pence is on board, Carson gave up looking for the light switches at HHS and is waiting in the wings----and----Diamond & Silk were at the WH. This is getting better, isn't it?
Thoughts and prayers will be all he has when it comes knocking at the White House door
Imagine if his own family contracts it. He will spend as many tax dollars as he can to get them care.
Ever read Masque of the Red Death or something like that, written by Edgar Allen Poe?
That's what he reminds me of.
People act like we're starting from scratch when we're not. What does the CDC do, why are we paying 15,000 CDC employees, why are they there if not to be prepared for events like this? What is FEMA for, do you think they don't have a pandemic plan? If there's one thing our government is good at it's making plans, they make plans for every eventuality and those plans are constantly reviewed and updated. That's what Agencies like the CDC, FEMA, and every other agency do when they're not dealing directly with an emergency they're planning and preparing for the next emergency what ever that might be. That's not to say they'll carry out their plans flawlessly but making them bigger than they are or giving them another billion on top of the billions they already get isn't going to help. If there's one good thing that came out of the Cold War it's that we do have good plans and we do have procedures in place to mobilize Military and Civilian forces to meet just about any challenge. The thing to remember is the CDC isn't a hospital or a rescue service they are the planners and leaders their job is to have a plan and direct and coordinate the response by government and civilian health organizations according to that plan. The Idea that Trump has to come up with a "Plan" or even hire people to do it is ridiculous, the plans are already made and I'm sure they are being reviewed as we speak.
"If Trump is changing that, it is a threat to public health and safety."
No shit. Would he care, again NO.