April 3rd 2020

By Bill Berkowitz and Gale Bataille 

The Trump administration has failed the American people. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell admitted as much when he claimed that the Trump administration was too distracted by the Senate impeachment hearings to devote the proper time and attention to the impending coronavirus pandemic. But Team Trump actually had advance warning of what might lay ahead, and they chose to ignore those warnings. Though some may say that it’s too soon to examine why COVID-19 is raging across the U.S., the Trump administration must be held to account for delaying implementation of critical prevention and mitigation measures. 

Team Trump didn’t have to reinvent the wheel to respond to COVID-19 because detailed planning steps and actions were already laid out in the National Security Council’s 2016 pandemic playbook. To make matters worse, in 2018, the Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team as a cost cutting measure. Over the past three years, the Trump administration has attacked “all things Obama” – foreign policy, human rights, environmental regulations. Now, Trump’s disdain for all things Obama may contribute to hundreds of thousands of American deaths.

“[A]ccording to a previously unrevealed White House playbook, the government should’ve begun a federal-wide effort to procure that personal protective equipment at least two months ago,” Politico’s Dan Diamond and Nahal Toosi reported. “Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” the playbook instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when facing a potential pandemic. ‘If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?’”

The 69-page playbook titled “Playbook For Early Response To High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats And Biological Incidents,”  was prepared by the National Security Council and was clearly aimed at combatting pandemics. Key recommendations included insuring “that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act — all steps in which the Trump administration lagged behind the timeline laid out in the playbook.”

“’Each section of this playbook includes specific questions that should be asked and decisions that should be made at multiple levels’ within the national security apparatus, the playbook urges, repeatedly advising officials to question the numbers on viral spread, ensure appropriate diagnostic capacity and check on the U.S. stockpile of emergency resources.”

“The U.S. government will use all powers at its disposal to prevent, slow or mitigate the spread of an emerging infectious disease threat,” according to the playbook’s built-in “assumptions” about fighting future threats. “The American public will look to the U.S. government for action when multi-state or other significant events occur.”

The playbook states: “Early coordination of risk communications through a single federal spokesperson is critical.”   

The Federal Leadership Void

The utter lack of clear and consistent leadership, communications and coordination are hallmarks of the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A functioning (now terminated) pandemic response team within the National Security Council couldn’t have fully addressed Trump’s chaotic approach to governance, but it might have provided a leg-up on response planning and federal coordination of logistics.

On February 24, Judd Legum, who runs Popular Information -- a newsletter he describes as being about “politics and power” – tweeted: 

“With the coronavirus killing thousands and threatening to tank the global economy, I feel like more people should be talking about the fact that Trump fired the entire pandemic response team two years ago and then didn't replace them.” 

In May of 2018, the Washington Post’s Lena H. Sun reported that “The top White House official [Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer] responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic has left the administration, and the global health security team he oversaw has been disbanded under a reorganization by national security adviser John Bolton.” 

According to Sun, “Ziemer’s departure, along with the breakup of his team, comes at a time when many experts say the country is already underprepared for the increasing risks of a pandemic or bioterrorism attack.”

The US has lost 2 ½ months during which the federal government could have ramped up the production of critical equipment for fighting the pandemic – including test supplies, personal protective equipment and ventilators. Now the New York Times reports that the federal stockpile is depleted with states and federal agencies competing to purchase supplies on the world market. 

The New York Times reported: “While there is no more personal protective equipment in the stockpile left over for the states, the senior official said the administration still has more than 9,400 ventilators ready to be deployed. The dwindling resources have forced the federal government to compete with states and private companies for valuable medical gear across the world.”  

The Trump administration’s failure to project demand and use the Defense Production Act to produce the most basic needed medical equipment demonstrates a disgraceful lack of foresight and action. It is impossible to state “too little too late” with enough hyperbole.  

What hope can be found is mostly at the state and local level.  States, counties and municipalities in some areas of the country are drawing on their disaster response infrastructure and plans for biologic and pandemic response that were first developed with federal funding after the 2001 World Trade Center attack.  And filling the federal void, governors from some neighboring states are working with each other for to coordinate production, purchasing and distribution of needed supplies. Examples include California, Oregon and Washington on the West Coast and New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on the East Coast.  

And what about the frequent calls for federal leadership? It is necessary, but at this point it is difficult to envision the Trump administration actually assuming more aggressive federal coordination of resources. However, would allocation of resources be based on projected needs or would it be based on the extent to which the state or city’s leader played nice with our narcissist in chief?  

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Bill Berkowitz has been covering right-wing movements for the better part of three decades. Gale Bataille is the former director of Mental Health Services for Solano and San Mateo counties.