The NIH had 13 years to prepare for coronavirus but still didn't

American Thinker ^ | 27 Mar, 2020 | Andrea Widburg

[MtnClimber]

If there's one thing the coronavirus experience has taught us, it's that bureaucracies don't function as well as they're supposed to. In New York, the bureaucracy opted to spend $500 million on illegal aliens instead of on ventilators. Likewise, during the Obama administration, after the 2009 H1N1 epidemic, the Obama administration, despite warnings, never bothered to replenish stockpiles of N95.

It turns out now that the NIH was also doing the bureaucratic equivalent of twiddling its thumbs when it should have been acting to prepare America for the next pandemic. It's sheer luck — mixed in with Trump's foresight about China and good management skills — that Johns Hopkins, in late 2019, ranked America as the best prepared country in the world for handling a pandemic.

Twelve and a half years ago, in October 2007, researchers at the University of Hong Kong published an article entitled "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus as an Agent of Emerging and Reemerging Infection." The introduction, which looked back at SARS, described how China was a coronavirus Petri dish and warned that there could be a repeat of a SARS-style pandemic based upon Chinese food and lifestyle practices (emphasis added):

[semimojo]

My guess is that the article was supposed to describe the failures of our bureaucracies and an editor put a title on it that was a poor description of the article.

Possible, although given the revenue model of American Thinker the author would have incentive to sex it up as well.

[Vermont Lt]

I have been saying for weeks that Hospital Administrators—when folks hear about where they screwed up—should be strung up.

The crap they do to save a nickel—like dipping into the emergency supply—came back to haunt them when they could not order more.

I’ve only met one who did right for patients. And he died 10 years ago. He must be spinning in his grave.