Obama, Who Botched Two Pandemics, Criticizes Trump's Response to Coronavirus. Obama's HHS declared the H1N1 pandemic a public health emergency April 29, 2009, but didn’t declare it a "national emergency" until October—two months after WHO declared it a pandemic, after a thousand Americans had already died, and millions already infected. Obama was too busy accumulating his federal "inheritance" to take the outbreaks seriously.