George W. Bush Urgently Warned About A Pandemic in 2005 - ‘ If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare‘
From WWW.FOXNEWS.COM
Newly resurfaced footage of then-President George W. Bush urgently warning of the risks posed by pandemics in 2005 -- "If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare," Bush said at the National Institutes of Health -- has drawn belated praise from his detractors, and raised new questions as to the state of the federal government's disaster preparedness since his administration.
In particular, a USA Today fact-check recently confirmed that the Obama administration had allowed the N95 mask stockpile to deplete following a series of crises, and apparently ignored calls for experts to renew the stockpile. President Trump repeatedly has blamed his predecessor for the shortage as well, although he also apparently took no efforts to replenish the materials.
Former top Bush adviser Karl Rove told Fox News on Sunday that, while Bush implemented a pandemic plan, it wasn't properly maintained.
"The thing that gets me is, the national stockpile was built, and this was one of the issues... we had to make certain we had enough material in that stockpile, and there are a couple of issues here," Rove, a Fox News contributor, said. "One is this equipment -- there's a different durability to each item in the stockpile. If you've got yourself a ventilator, it's got a long life -- now it may be made obsolete by changes in technology, but it's got a relatively long shelf life."
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He added: "But, masks do have a shelf life. You can't make a mask and have it have the same impact in 10 years that it might have in two years. So, this means budgetary questions, because you're gonna have to replenish parts of the stockpile periodically.
"What amazed me was the fact that -- I think it was 2014, when they used so many N95 masks out of the stockpile and they were not replenished," Rove continued. "I think the same thing happened with some of the stockpile of ventilators. This is the kind of thing that once you're committed to it, you hope that the only reasons you change the commitment to it is because there's a change in technology, not a change in finances."
At the same time, Rove also asserted that it was something of an overstatement to say, as ABC News reported, that the former president was "obsessed" with pandemics. But, Rove said, it was true that Bush had read John M. Barry's "The Great Influenza" on the 1918 flu pandemic, and undertook comprehensive action.
"I think the word 'obsessed' is a little bit too much," Rove told Fox News, calling the ABC News piece somewhat "overdrawn" in its language.
"Bush is the one who says, 'OK we've got to have a goal, let's work towards the goal,'" Rove said. "And, Bush prodded to move people along in that way, but 'obsessed' is not a word I'd use for Bush. He's just focused."
Homeland security adviser Fran Townsend told ABC News that Bush implemented an "intense" effort, including war games in which Cabinet officials planned pandemic responses, diagrams for global early warning systems, funding for rapid vaccine technologies and a ... (Read more)
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Submitted 1474 days ago
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