From the article:
“Once a biodefense strategy was adopted, it was only a matter of time before it would be tested.
Trump had designated a cabinet-level steering committee to oversee its implementation. But that committee has never met to confront COVID-19 issues.
Instead, on Jan. 29, a day before the World Health Organization declared a global emergency, the president announced a Coronavirus Task Force. That arrangement isn’t mentioned in the Biodefense Strategy.
By Feb. 26, the virus had reached 37 countries outside China and established a foothold in the United States, with more than 50 known cases and countless undiagnosed due to a shortage of test kits.
That day, Trump named Vice President Mike Pence to lead the Coronavirus Task Force.
Jeremy Konyndyk, who served in the Obama administration as director of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, said that seemed ‘pretty striking.’ Although Trump’s biodefense strategy said Health and Human Services would lead the effort, ‘in an actual crisis the leadership is back at the White House, where it should have been in the first place.’
‘We’re playing catch-up,’ Lieberman said. ‘It is really, profoundly disappointing to me.’”
