Oh, come on, when was the last pandemic? Oh, wait!
It's worth noting that at the start of Trump 45, the pandemic preparedness work that Obama had done (stockpiling of PPE, ventilators, and the creation of briefing books and contingency plans, etc) was tossed in the dumpster.
Right after Obama took office (in the summer of 2009), there was a major Flu outbreak, and Obama issued a "get ready for stuff like this" order. When Trump came in, that inventory and those plans were labeled "from Obama, so necessarily wrong" and *literally* trashed.
Successful pandemic containment looks like nothing happened. That's what made the apparatus so easy to dismantle.
Forty years of catching outbreaks at 600 cases produces a population that's never seen 60,000 and assumes it can't happen here. The better the system works, the less evidence there is that it works. So dismantling it looks free.
Your "sovereign variables" frame is the bit I'll be thinking about longest. Five years ago nobody priced pandemic infrastructure when choosing where to live. Now it sits on the same list as rule of law and currency stability. The question is how many more variables migrate from "assumed" to "priced" before people realise the list itself is the story.
Oh, come on, when was the last pandemic? Oh, wait!
It's worth noting that at the start of Trump 45, the pandemic preparedness work that Obama had done (stockpiling of PPE, ventilators, and the creation of briefing books and contingency plans, etc) was tossed in the dumpster.
Right after Obama took office (in the summer of 2009), there was a major Flu outbreak, and Obama issued a "get ready for stuff like this" order. When Trump came in, that inventory and those plans were labeled "from Obama, so necessarily wrong" and *literally* trashed.
Successful pandemic containment looks like nothing happened. That's what made the apparatus so easy to dismantle.
Forty years of catching outbreaks at 600 cases produces a population that's never seen 60,000 and assumes it can't happen here. The better the system works, the less evidence there is that it works. So dismantling it looks free.
Your "sovereign variables" frame is the bit I'll be thinking about longest. Five years ago nobody priced pandemic infrastructure when choosing where to live. Now it sits on the same list as rule of law and currency stability. The question is how many more variables migrate from "assumed" to "priced" before people realise the list itself is the story.
This article is companion piece
https://stevenboardman.substack.com/p/they-knew-what-they-were-cutting
There will be a heavy price to pay for America’s greed and hate. Karma will make an appearance and she will not discriminate.
This is likely considered a good result by today's maga/trump administration.
Thanks, Bryan. A typically excellent and insightful analysis.
I read that USAiD was immediately dismantled by DOGE group because AID was investigating Musk for fraud /payment issues/ something related to this.