04 April 2020

Dismantled Safeguards

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times broke the story (link here) about how Donald Trump eliminated yet another pandemic-prevention program only months before the deadly coronavirus outbreak.

Called "Predict," the program trained scientists in sixty laboratories overseas to identify "1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses."

Why did Trump do this? Because he thought the program helped "foreigners" and thus was driven to do so because of racism and jingoism? Or did he cut the program so the money could be used elsewhere, like funding the cost of his innumerable golf outings?

Fortunately, the House of Representatives has formed a special committee to investigate the Trump administration's many failures in both preventing and responding to this pandemic crisis in the United States. The American people need to know how and why this disaster happened, just like it did after 9/11.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Speak up!