Current Events > G.W. Bush in 2005: 'If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late'

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https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-bush-2005-wait-pandemic-late-prepare/story

In the summer of 2005, President George W. Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he began flipping through an advanced copy of a new book about the 1918 flu pandemic. He couldn't put it down.

When he returned to Washington, he called his top homeland security adviser into the Oval Office and gave her the galley of historian John M. Barry's "The Great Influenza," which told the chilling tale of the mysterious plague that "would kill more people than the outbreak of any other disease in human history."

"You've got to read this," Fran Townsend remembers the president telling her. "He said, 'Look, this happens every 100 years. We need a national strategy.'"

Thus was born the nation's most comprehensive pandemic plan -- a playbook that included diagrams for a global early warning system, funding to develop new, rapid vaccine technology, and a robust national stockpile of critical supplies, such as face masks and ventilators, Townsend said.

The effort was intense over the ensuing three years, including exercises where cabinet officials gamed out their responses, but it was not sustained. Large swaths of the ambitious plan were either not fully realized or entirely shelved as other priorities and crises took hold.

But elements of that effort have formed the foundation for the national response to the coronavirus pandemic underway right now.

"Despite politics, despite changes, when a crisis hits, you pull what you've got off the shelf and work from there," Townsend said.

When Bush first told his aides he wanted to focus on the potential of a global pandemic, many of them harbored doubts.

"My reaction was -- I'm buried. I'm dealing with counterterrorism. Hurricane season. Wildfires. I'm like, 'What?'" Townsend said. "He said to me, 'It may not happen on our watch, but the nation needs the plan.'"

Over the ensuing months, cabinet officials got behind the idea. Most of them had governed through the Sept. 11 terror attacks, so events considered unlikely but highly-impactful had a certain resonance.

"There was a realization that it's no longer fantastical to raise scenarios about planes falling from the sky, or anthrax arriving in the mail," said Tom Bossert, who worked in the Bush White House and went on to serve as Homeland Security secretary in the Trump administration. "It was not a novel. It was the world we were living."

According to Bossert, who is now an ABC News consultant, Bush did not just insist on preparation for a pandemic. He was obsessed with it.

"He was completely taken by the reality that that was going to happen," Bossert said.

In a November 2005 speech at the National Institutes of Health, Bush laid out proposals in granular detail -- describing with stunning prescience how a pandemic in the United States would unfold. Among those in the audience was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leader of the current crisis response, who was then and still is now the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"A pandemic is a lot like a forest fire," Bush said at the time. "If caught early it might be extinguished with limited damage. If allowed to smolder, undetected, it can grow to an inferno that can spread quickly beyond our ability to control it."

The president recognized that an outbreak was a different kind of disaster than the ones the federal government had been designed to address.

"To respond to a pandemic, we need medical personnel and adequate supplies of equipment," Bush said. "In a pandemic, everything from syringes to hospital beds, respirators masks and protective equipment would be in short supply."

Bush told the gathered scientists that they would need to develop a vaccine in record time.

"If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine on line quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain," he said.

Bush set out to spend $7 billion building out his plan. His cabinet secretaries urged their staffs to take preparations seriously. The government launched a website, www.pandemicflu.gov, that is still in use today. But as time passed, it became increasingly difficult to justify the continued funding, staffing and attention, Bossert said.

"You need to have annual budget commitment. You need to have institutions that can survive any one administration. And you need to have leadership experience," Bossert said. "All three of those can be effected by our wonderful and unique form of government in which you transfer power every four years."

Bush declined, through a spokesman, to comment on the unfolding crisis or discuss the current response. But his remarks from 15 years ago still resonate.

"If we wait for a pandemic to appear," he warned, "it will be too late to prepare. And one day many lives could be needlessly lost because we failed to act today."
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Prophet
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Trump in 2020: "the media hype is just a Democrat hoax. This is no worse than the flu. It'll disappear like a miracle."

Damn, so whoever was president after him should have really taken this seriously and got us prepared for it.

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gatorsPENSbucs posted...

Damn, so whoever was president after him should have really taken this seriously and got us prepared for it.

Obama did. Trump fired the team Obama set up, cut a lot of the "red tape" and regulations Obama put in place in case of such an emergency and then pretended the whole thing was no worse than the flu until too late

Donald's NSC literally had a guide book drafted and ready to go for just this emergency that would have spelled out everyone's roles and responsibilities and actions to take. And they just never did anything with it.

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gatorsPENSbucs posted...

Damn, so whoever was president after him should have really taken this seriously and got us prepared for it.

True

When even GWB understands something better than you
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Not to mention Obama had to deal with multiple global health scares and he acted responsibly and swiftly in dealing with them.

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gatorsPENSbucs posted...

Damn, so whoever was president after him should have really taken this seriously and got us prepared for it.

He did Fuck Face

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Once again, gators puts his foot squarely in his mouth. His tag is still strongly applicable

gatorsPENSbucs posted...

Damn, so whoever was president after him should have really taken this seriously and got us prepared for it.

What a fucking idiotic post but no one is surprised you're making it.

AtelierRyza462X posted...

True

lol these alts are pathetic

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gatorspen refuses to address why trump fired the pandemic response team obama put in place and gutted the cdc


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I never thought I'd see a president that makes George W Bush seem intelligent but here we are
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Weezy_Tha_Don posted...

lol these alts are pathetic

That dude likes My Little Pony in a very non PG way. I'd say that his posts here are probably the least pathetic thing about his life

Resaix posted...

Obama did.

So we should have plenty of masks and ventilators and toilet paper and everything we need correct?

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gatorsPENSbucs posted...

So we should have plenty of masks and ventilators and toilet paper and everything we need correct?

Do you even pay attention to anything man?

So annoying.

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Ill say it again

anyone who thinks this is a this president failure is both right and wrong

right because trump botched the response

wrong because even if trump had the perfect response, wed still be insanely and inadequately low on supplies because NO president in the past 30 years, despite knowing full well the diseases that come out of China, had the balls to say hey lets pass policy that requires us to think more than 5 years ahead.

imagine thinking once trump is out everything will be just fine. You guys really need to dig deeper and take a look at just how incompetent our leaders have been for decades...

but then all I get is zomg whataboutism

its like dude, Ive been talking shit against our government longer than youve been alive. Im glad many of you finally caught up and realized how bullshit it is, but dont act like its all fixed with a quarterback change.

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