Quote Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai View Post
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 $15 billion; and the list goes on and on. Is it any wonder we're now in the middle of this giant cluster-f@#$??



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
So your assertion is that this class of potential threat is greater than the other potential threats and that it should therefore have been placed first in line for the available funding. Fair enough. The current administration certainly did the opposite, de-funding what infrastructure had been put in place by the Obama administration connected with this class of threat. In light of events, it is hard to assert that they did not blow the call on this one. The Trump crew seems to make more than its share of misjudgments.

But the basic point I make is still a question of resources and threats. Every possible threat cannot be prepared for in advance given available resources.