President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that his Democratic predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama, left him ill-prepared to handle a major health crisis when, in fact, Obama’s administration left behind a comprehensive pandemic game plan that included a 69-page playbook. But Trump’s administration abandoned those Obama-era recommendations. On top of that, National Public Radio’s Brian Mann is reporting that Trump’s administration, in 2017, “stopped work on new federal regulations that would have forced the health care industry to prepare for an airborne infectious disease pandemic such as COVID-19.”
David Michaels, who headed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under Obama, told NPR, “If that rule had gone into effect, then every hospital, every nursing home would essentially have to have a plan where they made sure they had enough respirators and they were prepared for this sort of pandemic.”
Trump has often touted his deregulatory efforts as a major success of his administration. But this example shows just one way of many in which these policies can go wrong with disastrous consequences. Many of these negative consequences may not emerge until years later. Continue reading.