Under Trump, America is less prepared for a coronavirus outbreak by Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar

[riversedge]

Last edited Tue Feb 25, 2020, 01:08 PM - Edit history (1)

Under Trump, America is less prepared for a coronavirus outbreak

Opinion by Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar Updated 8:03 PM ET, Mon February 24, 2020





(CNN)

.........................


.........................



...............Two aspects in particular worry us about the White House's response, or lack thereof. We have a President uninterested in global health concerns, broadly disdainful of experts and recently obsessed with and distracted by his impeachment.
Trump has often shown deep ignorance and cruelty on issues of global health. During the Ebola outbreak, when he was still a reality TV host, he said the US should not allow Ebola-infected citizens and aid workers to come back to the US and should let them "suffer the consequences."


He even deliberately spread misinformation, saying Ebola was: "Spreading all over Africa-and fast. Stop flights" and "The U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our 'borders.' Act fast!" He said this even though halting flights would bring potentially harmful consequences, like "hindering info-sharing, medical supply chains and harming economies," according to the World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

In 2014-2015 during the Ebola outbreak, his apparent disdain lived largely on Twitter. Now, in addition to sharing his often false opinions on Twitter, he claimed earlier this month that the coronavirus would weaken in the warmer weather despite no evidence to that effect.

The Trump administration is chronically inept at, and seemingly uninterested in, any type of long-term planning, given the numerous positions in government that remain vacant as well as the constant rotation of key cabinet positions and the ad hoc decisions made on the basis of a conversation or Fox News clip.

That posture, colliding with an anti-science and anti-expert bias, has corroded our epidemic preparedness. Columbia University has even tracked more than 400 cases of the Trump administration's efforts to restrict or dismiss scientific research, education or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information since 2016.

The dissolution of the entire global health security unit and removal of global health security expert Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council was the final step in a process of undermining one of the Obama administration's key decisions on global health.

The unit monitored epidemics and ensured that public health planning was coordinated within the more traditional security infrastructure. The lack of a clear chain of command for pandemic response is exactly the opposite of what is needed during an outbreak: clear governance, strategic thinking and forward-planning.

.........................

................................




"Chelsea Clinton is the Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation and teaches at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia. She completed her D.Phil in international relations at Oxford University, examining the first decade of the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. Devi Sridhar is a professor at the University of Edinburgh's Medical School and holds the Chair in Global Public Health. Previously, she was associate professor in global health politics at Oxford University. They are the co-authors of "Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?" The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the authors; view more opinion articles on CNN."

[jimfields33]

1. I hope we don't over do this

We have 68 people in quarantine with the virus. 14 days from now they will be free from it. Then what? We’ve had zero deaths.

[safeinOhio]

3. 1918 flu

500 million cases and 50 million deaths. This one looks like 9% fatal. Now we have better treatment, but also way more vectors to carry it around the world. I use to go thru old grave yards and look at all of deaths in 1918, lots of them.
current data on this one.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Looking a lot like 1918, only 9%

[duforsure]

2. Once one of his Hotels has someone with this virus in it

Watch as he changes his position , and uses our government and money to protect his business interests over the American people.