Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno
Dude what? Bill gates among many others have been talking about the potential of pandemics for decades, but what do you honestly think should have been done?
Could you imagine if Bush or Obama or Trump at any point before this spring had started blabbering about a potential virus from Asia that didn't exist and demanding we ...what? Make field hospitals? Thats insane.
Every day potential plagues come on to the scene and 99% of them never amount to anything because of luck or because we have modern medical technology but eventually some will get through given time. We cant completely fixate on this and alter our whole life because of the risk of a once in a century pandemic, it isn't reasonable.
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Bill Gates did his TED talk on this subject in 2015, and told Trump at Trump Tower in 2016 after the election about this exact thing. Not decades.
We did things about other virus outbreaks. The expertise and plans were executed, and the crisis was averted. The systems exist, and need both resources and global cooperation. That's how we stopped SARS, Ebola, etc. We actually eradicated smallpox and other scourges this way. Sandia Labs and Los Alamos developed a playbook for this (disclosure: I worked with these folks years ago), but it got shelved. These are the same labs who built the bomb. Really smart people. This playbook was shelved, the CDC funding was cut, and the global cooperation was systematically smashed during trade-war-o-rama. That doesn't even start to address the way that he panders to anti-vaccine kooks.
So, Trump screwed up our global cooperation, lost the playbook, reduced funding for the Centers for Disease Control, disbanded the Pandemic team, and kept dithering about taking action on a virus that was already killing thousands, and that every epidemiologist knew was already on our shores.
Don't distract with the field hospitals thing. It takes time to get the effort going, and wasted months mean that we lost the chance to nip it in the bud, and we still don't even know what the hell is happening as the death toll accelerates. I have a family member who runs logistics in one of the military central commands, and it takes months just to get equipment to a battlefield. Trump should just appoint a general, and be done with his helpless puppet show. Time for the adults to be in charge.
And, yes, we have to fixate on something that could kill millions of Americans if we just pretend it doesn't matter. That's what to fixate on. Focus, sir. Focus.