BREAKING: Before Trump's inauguration, a warning: 'The worst influenza pandemic since 1918'

[MelissaB]

Before Trump’s inauguration, a warning: ‘The worst influenza pandemic since 1918'

In a tabletop exercise days before an untested new president took power, officials briefed the incoming administration on a scenario remarkably like the one he faces now.

Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides faced a major test: the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans.

In a sober briefing, Trump’s incoming team learned that the disease was an emerging pandemic — a strain of novel influenza known as H9N2 — and that health systems were crashing in Asia, overwhelmed by the demand.

“Health officials warn that this could become the worst influenza pandemic since 1918,” Trump’s aides were told. Soon, they heard cases were popping up in California and Texas.

The briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn’t really happen — it was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump’s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.

And in the words of several attendees, the atmosphere was “weird” at best, chilly at worst.

More: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/trump-inauguration-warning-scenario-pandemic-132797

Twitter thread discussing here:

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[MelissaB]

1. POLITICO obtained documents from the meeting and spoke with more than a dozen attendees to help

POLITICO obtained documents from the meeting and spoke with more than a dozen attendees to help provide the most detailed reconstruction of the closed-door session yet. It was perhaps the most concrete and visible transition exercise that dealt with the possibility of pandemics, and top officials from both sides -- whether they wanted to be there or not — were forced to confront a whole-of-government response to a crisis. The Trump team was told it could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was “paramount” — warnings that seem eerily prescient given the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

The documents are at the link...

[OAITW r.2.0]

4. Asleep at the Wheel.

A common Republican trait since the 70's.

[D_Master81]

8. "Who could see this coming?"

[DesertRat]

2. k&r

[Yavin4]

3. Hey Spicer, the purpose of the briefing was not to prepare you, but to warn you to be prepared.

You were supposed to use your power to prepare the nation. Because that's your fucking job.

[sop]

5. Trump fired all the people who attended the exercise

[malaise]

6. Chris Lu was on Chris Hayes

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213111878

Another lie mashed down

[JHB]

9. This is twice now

This is twice that a cocksure incoming Republican administration had nothing but open contempt for its Democratic predecessor, were convinced that they knew better, brushed off the information that outgoing officials tried to pass on to them...

...and then got blindsided when the sort of crisis they were warned of did develop. Crises they proceeded to make worse by bungling and botching their response in the service of blind ideology or ego.

Twice. In a row.

Don't let this point get lost. It needs to be a talking point and campaign theme.

[Jarqui]

10. +1 Devastating article.

When more folks start dying, more will come looking for answers just like the families of those lost in Iraq, etc

No amount of Russian cheating can overcome that.

[Ms. Toad]

11. Ah, but no one could have predicted it. n/t