I agree that it 'probably' wasn't possible in Feb. People will point out that he was initially warned at the end of January about a 'possible' pandemic in the works, but it didn't look 'probable' for quite some time due to China suppressing information. You can't rightfully cast blame about that. However it does fall on his administration for disbanding the pandemic response team. It also falls on his administration and the ones prior for for not having existing stockpiles in place to deal with a respiratory pandemic. The world has known pretty much forever that it was a matter of 'when' not 'if' it would occur. The SARS/MERS scare along with the 2009 pandemic should have been enough fairly recent reinforcement for that to have occurred. Lastly, it is also fully on Trump for not actually using the Defense Production Act right away because he didn't want to force companies and expected them to 'do the right thing'. It also falls on the Trump administration for not taking a central leadership role at the time we needed it most. We had states competing with states for PPE and states losing bids to foreign entities. That never should have been allowed to happen.
The problem with stockpiling supplies for a pandemic, is you don't know which pandemic you're going to get. This time it was an upper respiratory infection. What if it were a hemorrhagic fever (dengue/Marburg/ebola) instead? There's be a need for some masks, but those infections are primarily spread through contact with body fluids. It's really hard to cover all bases.
That's why I think it makes much more sense to fund a broad based response like DRACO. We don't know what the next pandemic will be, but it will almost certainly be viral in nature. We have broad spectrum antibiotics now which still mostly work, which is why we don't get bacterial pandemics any more. We need a similar tool in our arsenal for viral infections.
As far as the Defense Production Act, it was threatened for use to make companies produce ventilators which it turned out we didn't need. Could it have been used to make companies produce masks? Certainly it could have. But there is a non-zero start up time from when you say go till when a manufacturer is geared up to produce a new product, even for something as simple as a mask. And as it turned out, the existing mask producers were able to increase their capacity faster than new production in the US could be brought on line, so the DPA was a non-issue there as well. What items do you believe Trump should have used the DPA to force the production of?
With respect to the pandemic response team, what would we be doing differently now had they not been disbanded? It would still come down to a judgement call between shutting down a great deal of the economy versus lifting the lock downs. I can't image that if it were still around the outcome of that decision which has been made (with some cajoling in some cases from the White House) by the states would be materially different.
I think you guys believe there are more degrees of freedom in this problem than actually exists. Once again, my evidence of that is that very different governments (France, Italy, Spain, the UK, etc.) have produced broadly similar results. Trump doesn't control those countries yet their and our results are not so different, with ours in most cases being somewhat better.
The only standouts have been Taiwan, South Korea, and Germany. Taiwan and South Korea completely ignored what the Chinese were saying in early January and assumed it was transmitting human to human and made a very aggressive response. They stuck the genie back in the bottle before it got all the way out.
Germany is the mystery to me. They are a major Western European country and they've done much better than their counterparts in Europe and US. Gamesguru thinks it's because they tested 2% of their population early. I'm skeptical of that because saying that you tested 2% of your population is the same as saying you didn't test 98%. I have a hard time believing that this low level of test penetration was the determining factor in their outcome. Testing is always good and I wish the US had gotten up to speed quicker and they are to be faulted for that lapse, no question. It will be interesting to watch the story unfold as to why Germany did so well.
Edited by Daniel Cooper, 03 June 2020 - 08:47 PM.
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This is a RELATIVE comparision, i.e. Florida today with Florida three weeks ago. And Sweden is getting raped by next door Nordic countries that have broadly similar demographics. The Florida response is absolutely inpalpable and will get people killed. Anyone not paying attention to the uptick is a right-wing toolbag, anyone not paying attention to demographic parallels or differences is of neanderthal intelligence
