Just over a year ago, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sounded alarms about America’s vulnerability to a major public health crisis. “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious disease,” the DNI reported in January 2019, “that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”
But Donald Trump put his head in the sand. After slashing federal pandemic response teams and kneecapping other public health initiatives throughout his first term, he failed to prioritize the potential for outbreak, declining to devote adequate resources to the looming threat. Now, as the DNI’s grim forecast last year proves correct, the United States’ national security apparatus is scrambling both to address a growing crisis in the country—and, potentially, within its ranks.
America’s national security and defense agencies are grappling with how to combat the virus quickly spreading across the globe—and the country—while simultaneously keeping their own staffs safe. But, critics and observers told Politico Thursday, actions by the Trump administration, like the 2018 ouster of Tim Ziemer, the White House’s top pandemic response expert, could make an effective response more challenging. “[Staff shakeups] have had a profound ripple effect, the consequences of which we are seeing play out now, I think,” Ned Price, who served in the CIA and on the National Security Council under Barack Obama during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, told the outlet.
As Politico pointed out, Ziemer, who was not replaced; Luciana Borio, the National Security Council’s director for medical and biodefense preparedness; and Tom Bossert, the former Homeland Security adviser who oversaw a since-disbanded global health security team, all were ousted in 2018, shortly after John Bolton joined the Trump White House. According to Price, that leaves the current administration with fewer tools than its predecessors to combat public health threats. “There are directorates that can pick up the slack,” Price said. “But you don’t have the same level of expertise of people who have lived through Ebola, H1N1, and other disease responses.”
“It would be nice if that office was still there,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading voice in the U.S. on the coronavirus threat, said on Capitol Hill Wednesday of the global health security directorate the Trump administration disbanded.
As Politico notes, just two out of more than 100 policy specialists at the NSC specialize in pandemics. That, perhaps, is yet another symptom of the Trump administration’s lack of preparedness for the escalating crisis, which Trump—up until Wednesday—had claimed to have under control. Such assurances rang hollow then, but are proving especially empty now, after the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a pandemic and governments, organizations, and cultural institutions in the U.S. and beyond take extraordinary measures in response. Even as Trump acknowledged the crisis Wednesday evening, announcing travel restrictions from Europe to the U.S., his response has come off as improvised. Lacking a sufficient emergency response infrastructure — necessary not only to combat public health crises, but also to obtaining accurate data from other countries, including closed societies with unreliable reporting, and other national security matters—could make the government’s efforts even more challenging.
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