I wonder if these researchers were reacting to knowledge that Bolton and the President would be removing the pandemic office from the White House and cutting the CDC budget related to cross-species transmission and pandemics by 80% in 2018.
https://www.the-scientist.com/notebook-old/going-batty-45283
Crameri’s boss, China-born virologist Linfa Wang,
So it appears Australia had a Bat Man who worked with the Bat Lady who is now missing. He seems to have disappeared so perhaps he died. BUt still can’t find any notices so far of his death. Interesting that people on twitter bring this guy up.
No, they were reacting to the fact that you suck Panda.
Troll.
No, the white house didn’t dissolve its pandemic response office
“.... Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017.”
“...One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap ... It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.”
no, Trump didn’t cut the CDC budget:
this attack is inaccurate. Trump has proposed budget cuts for the CDC in each of his budgets since taking office, but Congress never approved those proposals. Trump’s most recent budget plan calls for a 16 percent cut to the CDC, but that budget has yet to be approved by Congress. It’s fair to say Trump has tried to defund the CDC, but it’s inaccurate to say that he has succeeded—or that those fictitious cuts have affected the agency’s ability to respond to COVID-19.
When Trump was asked about those budget cuts, and about his firing of some top CDC officials, at Wednesday’s press briefing on the virus, he offered a pretty good defense.
“I’m a businessperson. I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them,” said Trump. “When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
Indeed, that’s a good way for the government to operate.
No, Trump didn’t cut pandemic research (in spite of wapo’s fake news 2018 headline). A five-year, one-time grant from Congress was slated to expire in 2019, with grant money still unspent:
Most of the funding comes from a one-time, five-year emergency package that Congress approved to respond to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. About $600 million was awarded to the CDC to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics. That money is slated to run out by September 2019...The CDC has about $150 million remaining from the one-time Ebola emergency package for these global health security programs, the senior government official said. That money will be used this year and in fiscal 2019...