America Is Not Set Up For This

[marmar]

(HuffPost) By the last week of January, Rob DeLeo knew it was going to get bad.

“I was having breakfast with my partner and I said, ‘We should get some extra food because we’re going to be inside for awhile,’” said DeLeo, a Bentley University professor who has been studying America’s political response to pandemics for more than 15 years.

Over the next two weeks, as he began preparing for a lengthy period of self-isolation, he was struck how calm political leaders seemed to be. The coronavirus was never mentioned at the Democratic presidential debate on Feb. 7. Even as cases appeared in major cities and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that person-to-person transmission was underway, no one seemed interested in warning Americans to get ready for a lockdown.

DeLeo later searched the congressional record and found just six mentions of the word “coronavirus” before Feb. 8.

“I’m a political scientist, not an epidemiologist,” said DeLeo. “If I was freaking out, why wasn’t anyone else?” .......(more)

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ea491f3c5b6d37635909669?utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063&utm_source=main_fb

[CrispyQ]

1. Some amazing stats in that article.

And yet preparing for hurricanes, earthquakes and pandemics is one of the best investments cities can make. According to a 2017 study, every dollar spent preparing for catastrophe saves roughly $6 in relief. Up to 80% of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, for example, could have been prevented with stricter building codes.

But America still spends orders of magnitude more on post-disaster relief than pre-disaster preparedness. Between 2011 and 2014, the federal government spent $3.2 billion fixing damage from disasters and just $222 million preparing for them. In 2016, FEMA had just $100 million set aside for major disasters — less than one-tenth the cost of just the first month of Hurricane Sandy relief.

[Laelth]

2. +1 n/t

-Laelth

[LiberalArkie]

3. Interesting... Everyone else has said the GW Bush read the book ad started the stockpile. But

In April 1998, President Bill Clinton read the Richard Preston novel The Cobra Event, a fiction book about a mad scientist spreading a virus throughout New York City. As a result, Clinton held a meeting with scientists and cabinet officials to discuss the threat of bioterrorism. He was so impressed, that he asked the experts to meet with senior-level aides at the Department of Defense and in the Department of Health and Human Services.

[Igel]

4. It was Clinton.

Your link was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_National_Stockpile#History

Interestingly, Clinton really focused on pharmaceuticals.

Bush II added the PPE.

Obama drew down PPE and added more pharmaceuticals.

Trump appears to be adding mostly PPE. And hydroxychloroquine.

[LiberalArkie]

5. Bush also added a heck of a lot of Cipro.