[Goose]

The data available on January 31st was enough for HHS to declare a public health emergency and for the president to issue travel restrictions to Asia, but not, in your telling to ask for a supplemental appropriation to fight the threat that had already made it onshore.  This makes no sense.  He easily could have asked for money to fund the development of testing and research, and to fill up the strategic reserve of ventilators and PPE.  In the best case scenario, where COVID-19 winds up being a "nothingburger", that money is still useful; it seems pretty clear that humans are susceptible to coronaviridae (SARS, MERS, and now COVID-19), so that money would not have been wasted.

Yes, he could have. But he (and essentially everybody else) though that probably the USA would avoid the problem (as we had in the past) and that if we didn't we were well enough prepared to get by. Yes, IF he thought we needed it, he could have asked for money to prepare. I suspect he was told by the people that advise him that we were OK, because that is probably what they believed.

Maybe if Trump had asked and congress failed to appropriate the money, we would be sitting here complaining about congressional inaction instead of presidential responsibility.  But Trump never asked so we won't get to see the counterfactual.  He issued the travel restrictions and proclaimed we had won.  Now, maybe that's a call that 9 out of the last 10 presidents would have made as well, but leadership is making the call that most others will fail to make.  And Trump failed to make it.



BC

Yes, and Bush II did make the call that others failed to make. Didn't turn out too well IMHO. Every decision, good or bad, is obvious in retrospect. Making the call others failed to make is great if you are right, not so much if you are not. I do agree that a diligent President would have taken the opportunity to strengthen our ability to respond to a health emergency because that President would have known how unprepared we actually were. However, the list of potential problems a President must deal with is very long. Ideally, he will always prioritize correctly. Often he doesn't and nothing bad happens. This wasn't one of those times.

[Goose]

The data available on January 31st was enough for HHS to declare a public health emergency and for the president to issue travel restrictions to Asia, but not, in your telling to ask for a supplemental appropriation to fight the threat that had already made it onshore.  This makes no sense.  He easily could have asked for money to fund the development of testing and research, and to fill up the strategic reserve of ventilators and PPE.  In the best case scenario, where COVID-19 winds up being a "nothingburger", that money is still useful; it seems pretty clear that humans are susceptible to coronaviridae (SARS, MERS, and now COVID-19), so that money would not have been wasted.

Yes, he could have. But he (and essentially everybody else) though that probably the USA would avoid the problem (as we had in the past) and that if we didn't we were well enough prepared to get by. Yes, IF he thought we needed it, he could have asked for money to prepare. I suspect he was told by the people that advise him that we were OK, because that is probably what they believed.

Maybe if Trump had asked and congress failed to appropriate the money, we would be sitting here complaining about congressional inaction instead of presidential responsibility.  But Trump never asked so we won't get to see the counterfactual.  He issued the travel restrictions and proclaimed we had won.  Now, maybe that's a call that 9 out of the last 10 presidents would have made as well, but leadership is making the call that most others will fail to make.  And Trump failed to make it.



BC

Yes, and Bush II did make the call that others failed to make. Didn't turn out too well IMHO. Every decision, good or bad, is obvious in retrospect. Making the call others failed to make is great if you are right, not so much if you are not. I do agree that a diligent President would have taken the opportunity to strengthen our ability to respond to a health emergency because that President would have known how unprepared we actually were. However, the list of potential problems a President must deal with is very long. Ideally, he will always prioritize correctly. Often he doesn't and nothing bad happens. This wasn't one of those times.