“The United States had plenty of warning. | We could see the coronavirus coming from China: Chinese health officials started seeing unusual pneumonias in Wuhan between Dec. 12 and 29. On Dec. 31, they reported to the World Health Organization that they had an unidentified pneumonia in the country; on Jan. 7, they notified WHO that it was a new coronavirus (which they actually knew 11 days earlier, on Dec. 27).

“The first death in China was Jan. 9, and the first case outside that country — in Thailand — was Jan. 13. The first case in the US was Jan. 21.

“We saw this coming. We had more time than many countries to prepare.

“We have a better health care infrastructure than many countries.

“We also had a detailed plan for what specific steps to take, and when to take them, in the case of a pandemic reaching our shores — a plan developed by the Obama administration and handed to the Trump administration. It was ignored.

“Today, the United States has the ignominious distinction of having more confirmed cases than any other country in the world — more than 86,000 — with the worst trajectory of new cases.

“Sure, you can make the argument that China or Russia may be lying about their number of cases, but it’s not exactly in their best interests to do so unless they don’t want any international help and don’t mind seeing 25 percent of their populations wiped out.”

SOURCE: From The Boston Globe subscriber newsletter

Failure | knew it & blew it: Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook – The 69-page document, finished in 2016, provided a step by step list of priorities – which were then ignored by the administration.” – Politico

It’s the “Trump Flu” now!