One year ago, Biden warned America was 'not prepared for a pandemic'

One year ago today:

We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security. We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores. https://t.co/1qqpgayUEX

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 25, 2019

In October of last year, COVID-19 had yet to be discovered. Biden was referring to the systemic quashing of Obama-era pandemic preparedness efforts, part of the Trump team's obsessive dismantling of government and, in particular, any government action taken by President Barack Obama during his own 8-year tenure. A month before Biden's warning, the Trump administration had canceled a 2009-created pandemic early warning program that specifically included work on potential novel coronaviruses.

Trump and his team also dismantled the National Security Council's global health section, halted Department of Homeland Security pandemic preparedness simulations, and ignored a pandemic strategy playbook left to them by the outgoing Obama team.

The first COVID-19 hospitalizations began in Wuhan, China less than two months after Biden's tweet. It wasn't that the nation's experts did not anticipate the arrival of a deadly new pandemic: The experts knew. It was Trump's team of arch-conservative government saboteurs who laughed off those preparation efforts in pursuit of the longstanding conservative dream of paring down government to the point where it could be drowned in a bathtub.

Source: Daily Kos