The biggest issue that the government had to face was testing - being able to diagnose somebody who has this illness. Our government wasn’t completely prepared to use that time. The problem was we weren’t completely prepared. In the end, he sided with the aides who supported the idea that this could actually help protect our nation’s health. The president asked, what could the consequences be on the economy? All logical things that you would probably ask.
A ban from traveling from the center of this epidemic could buy us some time, could help us to prepare ourselves before this came. And the top health officials of the nation, at that point, were agreed. But there’s an even more serious question that comes up, which is, should we ban flights altogether? And should we deny entry to anybody who has come from China in the last 14 days, to anybody who isn’t a citizen or a permanent resident here? So then that debate got shifted right to the Oval Office. And so at first, they say, OK, let’s screen the flights that are coming from China. The Trump administration officials start meeting every day in the basement of the West Wing. michael barbaroĪnd what does Azar do with this information and this understanding that whatever this is, it’s going to be a big deal? sheri fink And Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, says, this is a very big deal. Redfield tells Azar about these reports coming out of China, that there are these clusters of pneumonia cases, and that the likely culprit is a new coronavirus. And he gets this phone call from Robert Redfield, this doctor who’s the head of the C.D.C. And the secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar, is at home in Washington. And as it happens, the very next day, that global health security unit where she worked was shut down by a senior member of the Trump administration. in her words, the country is just not really ready for it. So this is a pretty senior health official on the National Security Council warning her colleagues that there is a very predictable threat here - a pandemic flu and - archived recording (luciano borio)Īre we ready to respond to a pandemic? I fear the answer is no.
We know that it cannot be stopped at the border.
The threat of pandemic flu is our number one health security concern. she steps up to the podium and she says - archived recording (luciano borio) And we’ve been working together for more than a decade on these issues. Well, it’s a pleasure to be here with so many of my colleagues.
So one of the officials with that group, with that unit - archived recording (luciano borio) It had actually been created, a special unit on global health security that was created after that terrible Ebola outbreak in West Africa. And among the officials there was a group from the National Security Council. And there was this one gathering of high-level people in Atlanta, Georgia, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based. So on that hundredth-year anniversary, many gatherings were held to discuss the lessons of that flu pandemic for today. And it just killed millions and millions of people around the world. So in 2018, it was the hundredth anniversary of the terrible 1918 flu pandemic. My colleague Sheri Fink on what went wrong. Today: It was supposed to be a relatively simple part of preparing for the coronavirus in the United States - testing for it. michael barbaroįrom The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. Transcript Listen to ‘The Daily’: Failing to Test for Coronavirus Hosted by Michael Barbaro produced by Annie Brown, Luke Vander Ploeg, and Adizah Eghan with help from Daniel Guillemette and Robert Jimison and edited by Lisa Tobin “Are we ready to respond to a pandemic? I fear the answer is no,” one senior U.S.
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