Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/04/11/obama-2005-pandemic-prediction.html
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Well, yeah. Obama was and is a very intelligent and very well-informed man, who cares about America and believes in the duty and ability of the federal and state govts to prepare for crises and overall act to protect and help Americans.
There are a lot of others – Bill Gates comes to mind first, since he was recently mentioned here on BB in epidemic context – who have been saying this stuff for a long time. None of this is surprising or new to any of the people who’ve paid attention and looked into things. Which is why Trump’s all-around destructive fucked-upness is so thoroughly unforgivable.
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Notice Obama cleverly avoids the issue of his birth certificate here. We’re on to you, buddy.
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2005 doesn’t seem that long ago.
But it feels like a galaxy far, far away.
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He obviously did this to make Donald look bad. That Obama plays the looooong game.
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Kind of obligatory nowadays
Come Back, Barack
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My question is did he take that decisive action compared to his predecessors once he became president during that brief opportunity to get policy through congress?
Or did it fall to the million other priorities that he also felt were important?
It’s worth remembering that the opportunity cost for security is high. It’s worth prizing, but so are many other things, and it’s hard to tell people they must do without vitally needed help now in order to prepare for a disaster that might never come.
And no, I’m not going to compare anything to the current travesty that is in power. “Better than Trump” is not a standard one wants to use for judging acceptable policy.
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Obama might have recognized the issue, but his administration didn’t really do the much to preserve manufacturing capacity of critical equipment needed for a pandemic. He might have been aware, and understood the importance, but not so much so as to stand against neoliberal economic policy when in power. He let domestic capacity atrophy under global pricing pressure.
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you know how trump does the exact opposite and tries to undo every single thing obama has done since obama made fun of him at the whitehouse correspondents dinner?
well killing thousands from lack of testing and no nationwide distancing orders is no exception
hope trump lives just long enough to watch everything he poisoned become undone and reversed, like he was never there but unfortunately we can’t undo all the death and suffering
btw you know why trump is in a rush to push everyone back to work? think about how many days it’s been since he made taxpayers send him to one of his golf resorts, he must be losing what little of his mind he has left because even he can’t go golfing while millions are wondering how they are going to pay rent
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It’s important to remember that the GOP publicly announced they would do everything in their power to thwart anything Obama did. And that’s what they did for his entire time in office. Then they called him a do-nothing president who didn’t accomplish anything important.
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You brightened my day.
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I think it was a promise to every one of his supporters long before WH Correspondents Dinner since we seem to have two competing countries at war taking turns electing governments.
there are so many ways to finish this sentence.
… the stainless steel toilet beside his cot overflow for the fiftieth time.
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Yeah, faced with all the possible disasters, it is a mistake to think that the particular disaster that happened is the one that was obviously avoidable. If the mega volcano under Yellowstone had blown up, everybody would be talking about all the warnings that we had and did nothing about. It looks like COVID-19 is the worst pandemic since the 1918 flu epidemic. How much current money do we expect politicians to spend on all the different crises that might happen ever hundred years or so? Instead, we try to prepare by doing things that might be applicable to a number of different hazards.
Don’t get me wrong, the current administration is uniquely awful in it’s response, because Trump is an awful person. But I think that it would be a mistake to ascribe our unpreparedness before this disease emerged solely to his fecklessness.
While my governor (Larry Hogan-Maryland) has been quite competent in his response, I wonder whether people raving about how great a job he is doing is because people are comparing him to Trump.
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Way back, in '07, I was in a not-successful TV show…
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President Obama is an extremely intelligent and well-educated individual. However, all it takes to make Mass Murderer Trump look bad is average intelligence, decent judgment, and a sense of the obvious.
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I sure hope you aren’t one of those who has called Trump a fascist and stating that he has violated the constitution, because the action you recommend here would be both.
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It is within the power of our current civilization to prepare for pandemic flu.
But would it have been possible to prepare for a megavolcano?
On the other hand, the IPCC has been dishing out warnings for decades…
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No it wouldn’t. It would be responsible leadership under the circumstances in a national emergency.
Something Trump, the fascist who constantly violates the constitution, wouldn’t know about.
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Thanks McConnell you hate infected piece of shit. Way to serve the people.
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I’d think that the ACA, which mandated health care for everyone, was a big step towards better health outcomes for everyone, not just the pandemic-afflicted.
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