— from Michael Riordan via Seattle Times

As the numbers of local coronavirus cases and deaths grow inexorably, Seattle-area citizens are paying the awful price of the US president’s disdain for science. Our sprawling metropolitan area has become the US epicenter of this new disease, which could have been better contained had his administration not turned its back on prudent prevention and control efforts.

The departure of Admiral Timothy Ziemer last May and the dissolution of his global health security team at the National Security Council by John Bolton left the Trump administration rudderless in confronting global pandemics such as the one now staring us starkly in the face. “America First!” unfortunately does not help corral viruses that can cross national borders almost as easily as the wind.

The appropriate response to such global threats is inherently international.

The president has attempted to gut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A hiring freeze that led to hundreds of vacant staff positions hurt its infectious disease-control abilities and health-emergency readiness. And his 2021 budget, released in February, proposed an unconscionable 16 percent funding cut for the CDC, aiming to further reduce spending on global health.

It’s hardly any wonder, then, that “the rollout of a CDC-designed test kit to state and local labs has become a fiasco because it contained a faulty reagent,” according to the authoritative magazine Science. Despite plenty of advance notice that the virus was headed our way, with the first US case showing up in Everett on January 20, testing was initially limited narrowly to travelers from China and to those with whom known victims had come into close contact. And until late February, tests had to be done by the Atlanta-based agency because of the test-kit flaw, taking precious additional days.

READ FULL ARTICLE: www.seattletimes.com/opinion/in-the-age-of-coronavirus-our-nation-needs-a-responsible-leader-who-trusts-scientists/

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