Democrat 2020

[ReluctantSamurai]

Please tell me, now, how we should prepare to handle the next disaster/crisis/health threat. Then tell me how we can fully fund that preparation. Then tell me how we can fully fund ALL of the potential threat mitigations that will probably needed at some point in the future but at a point in the future of which we cannot be certain.

Predicting potential disasters is the job of specialized agencies.

The US has agencies for predicting military threats (NSA, CIA, DIA, DTRA, etc.), and they are well funded and staffed. While I don't have numbers at my finger-tips, I would guess budgets for those agencies have only gone up since 9/11.

Agencies for predicting natural disasters (NOAA, USGS, OST, and various specific agencies for fire, earthquake, drought, floods, etc).

The Trump Administration has proposed cuts for nearly every one of those agencies (though how those cuts make their way through Congress is a matter of which states are impacted): NOAA (proposed 2020 budget cut of 18%); other cuts to science and research agencies---
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...ience-programs

There are a litany of agencies related to health in the US: HHS, CDC, AHRQ, NIH, HRSA, to name a few of the largest. Persistent cuts to these agencies by the Trump Administration, while not directly tied to any specific reason for our current abysmal response, nonetheless undermined the entire process of predicting and responding to a biological disaster.

Shutting down the entire global-health-security unit of the National Security Council; eliminating the US government's $30 million Complex Crises Fund; reducing national health spending by $15 billion; and the list goes on and on. Is it any wonder we're now in the middle of this giant cluster-f@#$??

There are not, never have been, and likely never could be enough resources to be prepared constantly for all things that might turn 'bad.' So our governments make choices and yes, they sometimes malf it up. That's the nature of things with decision making and resources.

Of course noone has a magical crystal ball that predicts the future, but outside of a cataclysmic celestial event, or nuclear winter, the single disaster event that has shown the capability time and time again in human history to wreak havoc on our world is the pandemic. Defunding the ability to predict and respond to such health threats is not something I would have EVER allowed to happen if I was in the position of the President of the United States.

So, I stand by my earlier statement---now the dead will have their say