The Homa Files

Trump’s pandemic response triggered by a Sept. 2019 Report.
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During the DNC, Gov. Cuomo echoed the Dem talking point that the Trump administrations Covid-19 response has been “dysfunctional and incompetent” … that the federal government “couldn’t fight off the virus. In fact, Trump didn’t even see it coming.”

With that in mind, an op-ed in the WSJ a week ago caught my eye:

The White House Prepared for a Pandemic: A September 2019 report laid the groundwork for Operation Warp Speed

The authors  were on the team that wrote a September 2019 White House report that (1) calibrated the likelihood of a pandemic (2) identified rapid vaccine development as the key to an effective response, and (3) recommended policies and actions to speed vaccine development.

Based on the report and its follow-up, the authors assert:

“The administration was well aware of the threat of a pandemic before the novel coronavirus emerged … and there was “immediate presidential action” to implement the reports recommendations.

Specifically, they report:

On Sept. 19, a few days after the CEA issued its report, the president signed Executive Order 13887.

The essence of the Executive Order:

It is the policy of the United States to modernize the domestic virus vaccine enterprise to be highly responsive, flexible, scalable, and more effective at preventing the spread of viruses.

This is a public health and national security priority, as viruses have the potential to significantly harm the United States and our interests, including through large-scale illness and death, disruption to military operations, and damage to the economy.

The EO created several initiatives to modernize vaccine production, including “incentives for the development and production of vaccines by private manufacturers and public-private partnerships.”

In other words, the September 2019 White House report and the EO that quickly followed laid the groundwork for Operation Warp Speed — perhaps, the most critical component of the coronavirus response, hastening the development and launch of therapeutic drugs and vaccines.
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Coming: A drill down on the Dec. 2019 White House Report

This entry was posted on September 2, 2020 at 10:00 am and is filed under Coronavirus - Covid 19. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.