Hacker News Reader

Comment by notRobot | Hacker News Reader

"In fact, if there's one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it's that it can serve as an early warning – a wake-up call – to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic"

He said this in 2015. No one listened.

View on HN

That's not true. Obama gave the US government processes for dealing with one. That was the function of the NSC, and specifically the pandemic response unit. It was in response to the Ebola outbreak. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/trump-cuts-nation... has a reasonable history.

The problem is that people are dumb and forgetful.

Correct. And Trump completely disbanded the Pandemic response team in 2018.

Do you have something linkable?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/487581-bolton-de...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/i-dont-know-anyt...

In 2018 the people in charge of the program were forced out, and Trump repeatedly (unsuccessfully) sought to cut the CDC budget (and the administration is currently still advocated for budget cuts after declaring an emergency, but who knows how long before this guy is thrown under the bus[2])

This was widely condemned but I don’t remember much media coverage. In 2019 a bipartisan group of experts petitioned the president to reinstate those positions and not to cut funding[0], and recently at the start of the outbreak in February senators wrote a letter to the head of the NSC to please appoint people for the pandemic preparedness roles[1], but so far nothing.

[0] https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/1...

[1] https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021320%20NSC%20N...

[2] https://thehill.com/policy/finance/486817-trump-budget-chief...

Did you open the link two posts above yours?

FYI

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/10/1926075/-Trump-St...

This reminds me of the financial crisis in 2008. A ton of people knew what was going on and issued warnings but not many listened. What I don’t like is the effort to make some people like Gates into heroes that saw what nobody else saw. Public health experts warned for decades that we are not prepared but nobody wanted to pay for action.

> What I don’t like is the effort to make some people like Gates into heroes that saw what nobody else saw

Though I suspect if it was Elon Musk who said the same thing, there would be no shortage of hero worship.

Have we found his underwater lair yet? He's trying very hard to be a comic-book mega-industrialist. But his kind of character seems far more like a Bond villain. Dr. Not Yet?

Instead we get this:

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12360294490421985...

I wonder how many of those experts got on a stage to give 'we, the people' that warning. The media will hide that stuff on page nnn because it's not popular.

Whatever I may think of Gates' past actions, I applaud his educational and other-directed actions ... they're not about consolidating power or fortune. Carping and suspicion about anyone's generosity is bottom-feeding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com