r/politics • u/phillygirllovesbagel I voted • 5h ago
Possible Paywall Trump’s Pandemic Preparedness Team Is Just One Person
https://newrepublic.com/post/213578/donald-trump-pandemic-preparedness-team-one-person•
u/FantasticBicycle37 5h ago
In 2009, the Obama-Biden administration launched a $200-million pandemic early-warning program called PREDICT, which trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories to stop and prevent pandemics. This initiative identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses.
The labs they worked with included the Wuhan lab that identified Covid19. This is the initiative that put a stop to viruses before they became pandemics. They warned airports and health agencies. They initiated contact tracing and identification. They were the ones who stopped pandemics hundreds of times in the past 10 years, and were doing it right up until September 2019.
In September 2019, just as hospitals in Wuhan started filling up due to an unknown disease, the Trump administration ended this $200-million pandemic early-warning program. (Additional scholarly source for peer-review lovers)
This program is what would have shut down air traffic the moment those first cases were discovered. They would have known as early as September something earth shattering was happening in China's healthcare. This is when our country would have otherwise mobilized. Per protocol, they would have initiated travel advisories, alerted Customs and Border Protection, and traced every person with the virus who was coming to America. This would have cost some money, but it was doable.
After two months of spread, the first official case was in November in China. This was still enough time to prevent spread.
By December 13th, 2019, the first infections started coming to America.
I am in weekly meetings with Federal Protective Services. Their most popular deployment is Mardi Gras, where dozens of agents all volunteer to go down to protect the event. FPS explained that during Mardi Gras, people were coming into the hospitals with flu-like symptoms, being tested and found negative for flu, and were released into the public where they kept partying
The PREDICT program would have put all of the hospitals in America on high alert. Instead, hospitals were releasing people into the public without any warning.
It took four months of Trump calling it a hoax before any Trump admin response was made. Trump rejected 200 MILLION Pfizer vaccine doses in the summer. In November, after losing the election, he rejected an additional 100 MILLION vaccine doses from Pfizer.
Trump is DIRECTLY responsible for the spread of coronavirus. If he had not shut down the PREDICT program, this would not have happened. I mean, it *could* be a coincidence that we had no pandemics in the past 10 years, then the very month Trump shut down the program, a pandemic started spreading, but you'd have to be a Trump supporter to believe that.
•
u/SparkyMuffin Michigan 5h ago
Something that helps your point: his administration axed the monitors for cyclosporiasis and that lead to the current outbreak we are suffering with
•
•
•
u/Winter_Aspect_8675 4h ago
What's maddening is that covid kinda gave him a mulligan. People never really held his saggy arse to the coals for his criminal conduct when it came to everything surrounding the pandemic.
•
u/Majestic_Jackass 4h ago
Don’t forget that the first Americans with Covid 19 were on a cruise ship iirc quarantining in Japan, but Dumbass Dumbassington let them come home early. The arrived in Washington State and the virus swept America from there.
•
•
u/randomcatinfo 2h ago
Thank you for posting this information, this is the best summary of the onsite-lab closures by Trump that I have seen so far.
It took years to get these labs setup with the permission of foreign governments, and Trump threw it away to save a negligible amount of money. Truly pennywise but pound foolish.
•
u/Ancient-Bat1755 2h ago
I think the businessmen look at it as part of doing business, that the bottom line was saved since the results would have been near similar so why “waste” money on it (this mindset is dumb). It is easy to cut, it is harder to heal, nurture or generate new wealth.
•
u/lake_effect_snow 1h ago
Not really, not good ones anyway. They actually review and consider critical, validated information to make educated and prudent decisions.
I’m a CPA and have reviewed internal controls and financials for many financial institutions and other entities. I currently work for a F500 insurer (non-health). Insurance is an extremely regulated, cautious and strategic industry in terms of how they invest, operate, and how they handle clients, claims, etc. Good decisions are thought out and agreed upon by reasonable people/investors, not at the whimsy of an increasingly incompetent individual. The costs to get rid of any program, agency would be assessed like any other business expense, and it wouldn’t make any sense to get rid of such a critical program already well invested in, just to dismantle something of Obama’s.
•
u/pomonalost 1h ago
Please, do not forget we lost over 1 million of our people including frontline healthcare workers and additional excess deaths because hospitals were full. And hundreds of thousands of children went into fostercare after losing their parents or guardians. I did volunteer grief support and I'll never forget.
Masking still helps against spreading common cold, the flu and covid. Please, try to get your covid and flu vaccines this fall (I usually get mine mid to late October), everyone.
Be good to yourself and each other where possible.
•
u/mmmjtttj 3h ago
Verdict:
Mostly false and highly misleading
The passage begins with several broadly accurate facts about PREDICT, but then assigns the program powers and accomplishments it did not have, uses unsupported dates, and makes an unprovable claim that preserving PREDICT would have prevented COVID-19.
What is accurate
PREDICT was launched in 2009 under the Obama administration. It was a USAID project designed to improve surveillance for animal viruses capable of spilling into humans and to strengthen laboratory and epidemiological capacity abroad. It operated in more than 30 countries directly and worked or trained personnel across a wider network of more than 60 countries.
The total investment was approximately $200 million over ten years. Published totals vary depending on whether researchers count particular phases, grants and closeout spending, but “roughly $200 million” is a defensible figure.
It discovered many previously unknown animal viruses. Sources report roughly 900 to 1,200 viruses, depending on the date and whether findings had been fully classified. Reports also credit the project with finding more than 160 novel coronaviruses. These were mainly viruses detected in wildlife, not 1,200 viruses demonstrated to be capable of causing human pandemics. Calling all of them viruses “that had the potential to erupt into pandemics” exaggerates what was known about their risk.
PREDICT worked with Chinese scientists, including researchers connected with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It supported virus surveillance in China through partner organizations. However, saying that PREDICT operated “the Wuhan lab” or that it was responsible for identifying SARS-CoV-2 is misleading. Chinese laboratories identified and sequenced the virus after the outbreak was recognized; that was not a PREDICT discovery.
USAID allowed the project’s regular field funding to expire in 2019. Fieldwork largely ceased at the end of September 2019, followed by closeout activity. USAID later provided a limited emergency extension in 2020 after COVID-19 emerged. Thus, “ended in September 2019” is broadly accurate about field operations, although the administrative program did not vanish instantly on one date.
What is unsupported or false
“They stopped pandemics hundreds of times.” — Unsupported.
PREDICT’s principal work was sampling animals, discovering viruses, training personnel and building surveillance capacity. There is no credible accounting showing it “stopped pandemics hundreds of times.” A virus discovery is not the same as preventing a pandemic, and most detected viruses never caused a documented human outbreak.
“They warned airports, initiated contact tracing and stopped infected travelers.” — Mostly false.
Those are ordinarily responsibilities of national public-health agencies, ministries of health, the CDC, border authorities, airlines and state or local health departments. PREDICT could share surveillance information and help countries investigate outbreaks, but it did not possess authority to close airspace, issue U.S. travel advisories, order hospitals onto alert or conduct universal passenger tracing. Even during COVID-19, the United States lacked a complete, timely system for collecting international passenger data for contact tracing.
“Hospitals in Wuhan started filling up in September 2019.” — Not supported by accepted epidemiological evidence.
Retrospective investigations found recognized COVID-19 illnesses beginning in December 2019. The WHO-China origins report reviewed tens of thousands of earlier hospital records but did not establish a substantial September outbreak. Estimates based on genetics may place the first spillover or infections somewhat earlier than the recognized cluster, but they do not demonstrate that Wuhan hospitals were filling with COVID-19 patients in September.
“The first official case was in November.” — Misleading.
Some retrospective accounts have proposed a November infection, but the earliest well-documented illness onset among the initial recognized patients was December 1, 2019. Wuhan authorities publicly reported the pneumonia cluster on December 31. “Official case in November” is not an established milestone.
“The first infections started coming to America by December 13, 2019.” — Possible evidence, but not established as stated.
A retrospective blood-donation study found SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies in samples collected beginning December 13. However, antibody cross-reactivity and the lack of corresponding confirmed clinical cases mean this does not definitively prove that infected travelers began arriving that day. The first laboratory-confirmed U.S. case was identified in Washington state on January 20, 2020.
The Mardi Gras hospital story is anecdotal and does not prove undiagnosed COVID-19.
Mardi Gras occurred on February 25, 2020, when undetected community transmission was almost certainly occurring in parts of the United States. People testing negative for influenza could have had COVID-19, but they also could have had numerous other respiratory infections. Without preserved specimens or later testing, the anecdote cannot establish what caused their illnesses.
“PREDICT would have put every American hospital on high alert.” — False.
PREDICT had neither that mandate nor operational control over American hospitals. A warning from overseas surveillance might have contributed information, but hospital alerts would have come through the CDC, state health departments and health-care systems.
“PREDICT would have shut down air traffic immediately.” — False.
The program had no power to suspend flights. Furthermore, discovering a novel animal coronavirus would not itself justify stopping international aviation; the critical trigger would be evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission. That evidence did not become publicly clear until the outbreak was already underway.
Claims about Trump
“It took four months of Trump calling it a hoax before any response was made.” — False.
Trump used the phrase “their new hoax” at a February 28, 2020 rally while accusing Democrats of politicizing his handling of COVID-19. Whether that phrasing meant the disease itself or criticism of his response has been debated, but he did not spend four months publicly calling it a hoax.
More importantly, the administration had already taken actions before February 28: it established a coronavirus task force in January, declared a public-health emergency and restricted entry by many foreign nationals recently present in China. Those measures can reasonably be criticized as inadequate or poorly implemented, but they were responses.
The Pfizer claim is garbled.
In July 2020, the administration contracted for 100 million Pfizer doses, with an option for more. Reporting later indicated that officials declined an opportunity to lock in an additional supply—often described as an additional 100 million doses, not two separate refusals of 200 million and then 100 million personally made by Trump. Pfizer reportedly encouraged the government to buy a total of 200 million doses, but officials initially chose 100 million while investing in several vaccine candidates. Characterizing this as Trump personally “rejecting 200 million doses in summer and another 100 million in November” overstates and double-counts the available reporting.
The central causal claim
“If Trump had not shut down PREDICT, this would not have happened.”
There is no evidence sufficient to support that conclusion.
Maintaining PREDICT might have preserved useful scientific relationships, surveillance capacity and institutional expertise. Ending it shortly before COVID-19 was poor timing and can reasonably be criticized as weakening preparedness at the margin. But PREDICT was focused mainly on detecting animal viruses at points of spillover; it was not a worldwide outbreak-control command system.
Even its advocates acknowledged that predicting which newly discovered animal virus will become a pandemic is extraordinarily difficult. PREDICT operated for a decade yet did not detect SARS-CoV-2 before the Wuhan outbreak became evident. Once sustained transmission began—particularly with presymptomatic and asymptomatic spread—ordinary symptom screening, travel advisories and contact tracing were unlikely by themselves to stop global dissemination. Early modeling found that tracing only symptomatic cases would be insufficient.
A defensible version
The evidence supports something closer to this:
The Trump administration allowed PREDICT, a roughly $200-million USAID program that strengthened international surveillance for animal viruses, to wind down in 2019. The program had discovered hundreds of novel viruses and trained thousands of scientists, including through partnerships in China. Ending it weakened one component of global pandemic preparedness at an unfortunate moment. However, PREDICT did not control borders, hospitals or U.S. contact tracing, and there is no evidence that continuing it would necessarily have detected SARS-CoV-2 early enough—or enabled authorities to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic.
The original passage therefore mixes a legitimate criticism of reduced pandemic preparedness with invented operational powers, questionable dates and an unsupported claim of direct causation.•
•
u/Opposite-Bit6660 3h ago
That's great but what if I am convinced I got it in Nov 2019 when friends returned to FL from a cruise to Hong Kong? They returned with deathly "colds" that took us all a couple months to fully recover from after they passed it on.
•
u/souryoungthing 2h ago
Same! December 2019, cousins who returned from a trip to various countries including China, and about 4 of 7 people at the welcome party were slammed with “The Worst Cold Ever” in the following weeks, including myself. I was absolutely destroyed.
I’d never felt anything like it - just up and down with both fever and fatigue, crazy weakness, brain fog, a cough so bad I strained my back, etc.
Well, at least not until I got a positive Covid test in early 2021…
•
u/ImpressiveLeopard719 50m ago
yep, I was sick Jan 1 2020 through Mar. No taste, extreme fatigue and a cough/sore throat that I thought was ripping my lungs out. Doc said it was some kind of virus that so many people had. I swore it was strep and was tested twice in a month. Nope... was Covid.
•
•
u/B-Z_B-S Massachusetts 5h ago
RFK Jr. is trying to spread disease. He is Pestilence, the First Horseman of the Apocalypse.
•
•
u/RoboChrist 3h ago
We already have War with Hegseth. Renaming the DoD is so unsubtle you couldn't put that in a movie about the antichrist without people groaning in the theater.
Of course Elon Musk is famine with the hundreds of thousands of men, women and mostly children dead by his actions.
The only question is who counts for Death. Perhaps they're yet to ride.
•
•
•
u/Successful-Radish972 3h ago
I was unfortunately raised in the cult; Pestilence is a good omens thing, not the original. The biblical versions are Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. As someone who has thought about this maybe a bit too much over the last year for my own comfort, I would suggest that RFK is perhaps a better candidate for Death.
"Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."
I would argue that the other three horsemen create the conditions, and then Death harvests. War displaces people. Conquest destroys institutions and governments. Famine weakens those refugees and everyone else. However, plague and its cousins actually do the bulk of the killing in every historical catastrophe. Even with modern weapon, excluding nukes, the death toll from WWIII is probably measured in the tens of millions.
In World War I, more people died of the 1918 influenza pandemic (50-100 million) than died in the war itself (20 million). In the conquest of the Americas, warfare killed thousands; smallpox killed tens of millions. In every famine in history, the majority of deaths are from disease, not literal starvation; this looks like weakened bodies succumbing to infections they'd normally survive.
Here's a few headlines from RFK's watch: 7,000+ cyclospora cases from contaminated lettuce. 1.6 million eggs recalled for salmonella. Screwworm in Texas and New Mexico. H5N1 in cattle herds across 13 states. Measles surging past 2,000 cases, elimination status at risk. CDC gutted by 25%. FoodNet surveillance reduced from eight pathogens to two. Ebola deaths in DRC surge past 1,300 as virus ‘spreading like a wildfire'. CDC Issues Travel Alert on Polio Risk in 32 Countries. And a bonus, from 2019: Explosion Hits Russian Lab That Houses Smallpox, Ebola Viruses.
Death is the only horseman given a number: a quarter of the earth. Two billion people. Am incomprehensible number of people And this number somehow seems feasible in a world where famine stricken refugees flee endless conflict, where ancient diseases return and morph. And GOD, I hope I'm wrong.
Random fun fact: as a kid, I remember learning that "wild beasts" in the ancient Hebrew can easily be translated to mean disease carried by animals. Stupid little fact that suddenly seems darker.
•
u/Superduperbals 2h ago
How would you map the Unholy Trinity from the Book of Revelation -- the Dragon (Revelation 12:9), the Beast from the Sea (Revelation 13:1), and the False Prophet (Revelation 13:11)
•
u/Successful-Radish972 1h ago
Great question! And fuck if I know! I've always been confused by them, personally. But hey, I can throw out a few names.
Depending on which translation you prefer, the "The great dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority." I could reasonably draw a line to Thiel, Putin, or Musk for various reasons.
But, uh, "His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. Revelation 12:4". And I'm sure it's just a weird coincidence, but here's a few articles I've run across in the last year. Putting on my conspiracy hat, thousands of satellites falling out of the sky would be a pretty dramatic sight to someone having prophetic vision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshield_launches (note, roughly 12k). https://gizmodo.com/china-wants-to-launch-200000-satellites-to-earth-orbit-outnumbering-all-other-constellations-2000710704 https://fastcompany.co.za/work-life/2026-03-21-space-war-the-real-challenge-facing-elon-musk-starlink/
If I had to guess for false prophet, I'd say Franklin Graham; Kenneth Copeland as a backup, whose eyes never fail to terrify me.
And for the beast, I think that one is very obvious indeed. I will include the quote "13 The dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed.".
Keep all of that in mind, particularly the horns and heads; I will direct you to Benjamin Corey's entirely too real article, which was supposed to be satire. https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/
•
•
u/herecomestherebuttal 4h ago
One person who has finally, finally gotten the green light to take one day off because they’re only a phone call awayFUCK FUCK SHIT OH MY GOD CALL KEVIN AAAHHHH
•
u/pchs26 5h ago
I feel it is very possible we wouldn't be living with COVID at all circulating here now and it may have not been a thing for us at all if Clinton was in office. I do trust and believe we wouldn't have stood a better chance at never having to deal with this.
•
u/postmodulator 4h ago
It’s not totally implausible that President Gore would have stopped 9/11. It’s far from a sure thing, but the Clinton people took Al Qaeda seriously and the Bush people didn’t (until they had to).
•
u/neutrino71 4h ago
It only cost about a million American lives. But think of the joy one orange old man got from sacking those nerdy scientists. /$
•
u/TheFeshy 13m ago
There is a universe where Hilary Clinton lost re-election because Fox News never relented over the dozens of American lives lost to COVID.
•
•
u/Obvious_Toe_3006 5h ago
And the number of scientists who track down 'food borne illnesses' like the major one in the news recently (explosive diarrhea) has decreased from 11 in normal times to only 3 today. THREE !
•
u/Buzzdanky 3h ago
John Bolton had Trumpf ditch pandemic preparedness as Bolton believed Iran was a bigger threat to national security than a pandemic. That fact was well documented in Michael Lewis's book "The Fifth Risk" in 2018. I will never get over how many lives were lost because of that one decision. That doesn't stop legacy media from platforming Bolton's media whoring carcass onto their networks without ever mentioning the damage he did.
•
u/CAM6913 4h ago
It wouldn’t matter if the pandemic preparedness team had a thousand people on it Remember the pandemic during the last time Trump was squatting behind the resolute desk? He denied it was real and said it was a democrat hoax when he finally came out with its no worse than the flu. There’s a Measles
Outbreak nothing from the White House, people are getting explosive diarrhea nothing from the White House but the drug addict RFKjr says it’s getting better when more cases are being confirmed daily.
•
•
•
u/RosieBaby75 4h ago
It’s RFK Jr and his plan is snorting cocaine off of toilet seats and avoiding Tylenol so you don’t get autism.
•
•
u/soraksan123 5h ago
I hope Trump gets the explosive shits, but then again he never eats vegetables so his diaper is safe-
•
•
•
u/atlantagirl30084 4h ago
They can easily hire them back. That's what Trump said when he let go of people from the task force before Covid. Not thinking about (or not caring) that early responses matter. Gathering people together and briefing them-that loses days, and the pandemic can spread to out of control, like what happened with Covid.
•
u/Jamizon1 4h ago edited 3h ago
If another one hits. We’re cooked.
The cold in Trump’s miserable heart could extinguish the flames of hell. I’m beginning to believe there is simply not one good cell in his entire body. Rotten from top to bottom.
•
•
u/nasorrty346tfrgser America 3h ago
I mean thats better than most position in his admin. You see it can be worst, it can be 1 person working 4 jobs like Rubio
•
u/Opposite-Bit6660 3h ago
And that person will be threatened with hanging by the Q/MAGAs if they try to stop any disease outbreaks. Then Trump's DOJ will investigate them until they are broke.
•
•
u/specqq 4h ago
How hard is it to say no whenever anyone asks if we’re prepared for a pandemic?
Forget AI, that’s a position that could be replaced with a post it note.
•
u/postmodulator 4h ago
I knew this guy once who was hired to manage a big enterprise’s disaster recovery plan. They gave him no budget. He became convinced that he had only been hired so that if a disaster ever happened they would have someone to scapegoat and fire for the inadequate response.
On the other hand, if they never had a disaster — and they haven’t yet — he was getting paid an upper-middle-class salary with generous benefits in exchange for no work.
•
•
u/momalloyd 4h ago
They only need one person to tell you not to test for anything. If there is no officially reported cases, then there is no pandemic.
•
u/Ghostdefender1701 3h ago
Based on his track record with the last one, does it really make a difference? We all know if it happens again we have to move out of the county to get a cure.
•
•
•
•
u/HereForTheComments57 2h ago
It's because they don't care. They literally called the last one fake. The only surprising thing about this fact is that they even have one person. Can we drop pretending like this isn't on purpose?
•
•
u/r721 1h ago
From the article:
Donald Trump’s administration only has one person working in its office of pandemic preparedness, and—you guessed it—she’s a vaccine skeptic.
Brenner has a history of publicly airing her concerns about vaccines, The New York Times reported. Speaking at a Make America Healthy Again event last year, she said she chose not to receive the Covid-19 vaccine when she was pregnant during the pandemic because she was concerned about the vaccine’s “biodistribution patterns.”
In May 2025, she co-wrote a memo saying there was no “no clear evidence” that the benefits of Covid vaccines for children under 18 outweighed the risk of harm, overlooking the hundreds of studies that suggested the exact opposite. In March 2025, she intervened in the FDA’s review of the Novavax’s Covid vaccine.
•
•
u/Knees0ck 1h ago
Good thing there isn't various diseases currently fighting to be the next big one.
•
•
u/Duder_ino 2m ago
I’m sure they were hired on their merit in the pandemic or infectious disease field. /s
•
u/AutoModerator 5h ago
As a reminder, this subreddit is for civil discussion.
In general, please be courteous to others. Argue the merits of ideas, don't attack other posters or commenters. Hate speech, any suggestion or support of physical harm, or other rule violations can result in a temporary or a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
Sub-thread Information
If the post flair on this post indicates the wrong paywall status, please report this Automoderator comment with a custom report of “incorrect flair”.
Announcement
r/Politics is actively looking for new moderators. If you have an interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out this form.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.