Not only was there a playbook, there was a briefing and tabletop exercise with trump's top aides

[EleanorR]

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.

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

[guillaumeb]

1. Trump was too busy golfing, and Tweeting, and holding rallies.

And watching Fox.

[handmade34]

2. ...

https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/

Friday, Jan. 13, 2017: The joint Obama-Trump transition teams run an exercise for pandemic preparedness.
The outgoing Obama team runs the Trump transition team through a series of pandemic-scenarios. The transition documents, obtained by POLITICO, show that the purpose of the exercise is to familiarize the incoming team with “domestic incident management policy and practices” in the face of major crises.
Key takeaways from the exercise include: (1) a collective understanding of the science and the disease must drive response decisions; (2) days and even hours are paramount in order to build as much lead time as possible; (3) a coordinated and unified national response and message is necessary; and (4) “medical countermeasure strategy is key for success,” including social distancing and addressing shortages in ventilators and personal protective equipment.

Trump administration attendees include: Steven Mnuchin, Rep. Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Dr. Ben Carson, Elaine Chao, Stephen Miller, Marc Short, Reince Priebus (resigned), Rex Tillerson (fired), Gen. James Mattis (fired), Rep. Ryan Zinke (resigned), Sen. Jeff Sessions (resigned), Sen. Dan Coats (fired), Andrew Puzder (not confirmed), Dr. Tom Price (resigned), Gov. Rick Perry (resigned), Dr. David Shulkin (fired), Gen. John Kelly (resigned), Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Linda McMahon (resigned), Sean Spicer (fired), Joe Hagin (resigned), Joshua Pitcock (resigned), Tom Bossert (fired), KT McFarland (resigned), Gen. Michael Flynn (awaiting criminal sentencing), Gary Cohn (resigned), Katie Walsh (resigned), and Rick Dearborn (resigned).



Sometime in 2017: The Trump Administration is briefed on an Obama-era National Security Council Pandemic “playbook.” The brief is reportedly not adopted as an official Trump administration strategy.
“We are aware of the document, although it’s quite dated and has been superseded by strategic and operational biodefense policies published since,” an NSC official later states about the document in March 2020. “The plan we are executing now is a better fit, more detailed, and applies the relevant lessons learned from the playbook and the most recent Ebola epidemic in the [Democratic Republic of the Congo] to COVID-19.”
The playbook, published here, is designed to assist the government in a high-intensity and time-pressured pandemic response. It includes questions to ask, agency counterparts to consult for answers to those questions, and the key decisions that must be made early and often. It also includes sample documents that can be used for intra-agency meetings. The Trump administration does not follow many of the playbook’s suggested steps and recommended timelines...

more at link

[EleanorR]

3. 21 of "the best" people gone

It's just a non-stop revolving door of the incompetent and the malevolent.