The Trump administration is ill-prepared for a global pandemic

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The Trump administration has failed to fill crucial public health positions across the government, leaving the nation ill-prepared to face one of its greatest potential threats: a pandemic outbreak of a deadly infectious disease, according to experts in health and national security.

No one knows where or when the next outbreak will occur, but health security experts say it is inevitable. Every president since Ronald Reagan has faced threats from infectious diseases, and the number of outbreaks is on the rise.

Over the past three years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has monitored more than 300 outbreaks in 160 countries, tracking 37 dangerous pathogens in 2016 alone. Infectious diseases cause about 15?percent of all deaths worldwide.

But after 11 weeks in office, the Trump administration has filled few of the senior positions critical to responding to an outbreak. There is no permanent director at the CDC or at the U.S. Agency for International Development. At the Department of Health and Human Services, no one has been named to fill sub-Cabinet posts for health, global affairs, or preparedness and response. It’s also unclear whether the National Security Council will assume the same leadership on the issue as it did under President Barack Obama, according to public health experts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-trump-administration-is-ill-prepared-for-a-global-pandemic/2017/04/08/59605bc6-1a49-11e7-9887-1a5314b56a08_story.html?utm_term=.bb004cf8ebb2&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

[MineralMan]

1. It is ill-prepared for many, many scenarios.

That's just one of them. Trump is not prepared for much, really, and he isn't surrounding himself with people who are, either.

[Warpy]

2. Global pandemic? As long as the right people survive, barricaded in their mansions,

he and his rotten class would simply leave it to take its course. They really think they don't need any of us any more, that their money will preserve them in some sort of aristocratic amber forever.

They don't remember that money isn't worth anything when no one is left to use it.

[Hortensis]

3. Yes, a huge concern to anyone who pays attention to this.

Reminds me, we've been eating down our shelter-at-home stock (100% things we eat normally, anyway). Not that that would be adequate protection against the viruses like the measles that can survive a while away from hosts. Looking out across the beautiful wild marsh outside the windows, I know many sturdy viruses could and would just ride the ever-present breezes across on a dust mote.

Rump has shown no signs of being too extreme, or his family of being too stupid, to understand and care about these dangers once they are made aware, though. No one can plan on being truly safe from them. Let's just hope true extremists like Bannon, Mercers, and Alex Jones continue to lose influence. And, of course, the idiot-zealot Kochs's "Freedom" caucus in the house.