23
two weeks are a critical opportunity to turn things
around. The coronavirus cannot be stopped, but the
number of new infections can still be slowed. We may
be able to reduce the number of new cases, prevent
hospitals from being overrun, humanely treat those
who fall ill and reduce the total number of deaths
that sweep the nation. The President may yet play a
central role in a successful U.S. response to this pan-
demic. If he does, it will be thanks to the experts and
scientists, economists and governors, community
leaders and everyday Americans who led the way.
Trump’s firsT major error in the crisis came
a year and a half before the novel coronavirus first
emerged in Wuhan, China. In May 2018, he autho-
rized his then National Security Adviser, John Bolton,
to eliminate the National Security Council’s global
health security unit and demote its pandemic experts.
It was a tiny office, but it had huge responsibilities.
Its main job was to serve as an early-warning system
for impending pandemics. “We definitely would
have been sending up flares,” the unit’s former
senior director, Beth Cameron, tells TIME. In
the case of a global health emergency, its experts
were in charge of helping coordinate the dozens of
institutions—health agencies, hospitals, and state
and local governments—that must respond in a
crisis. Bolton, long gone from the Administration,
defended his reorganization of the NSC on Twitter
as COVID-19 spread. But those on the front lines
of the crisis felt its absence. “We worked very well
with that office,” Fauci told Congress on March 11. “It
would be nice if the office was still there.” Asked on
March 13 about the decision to shut down the unit,
Trump again sidestepped responsibility. “I didn’t do
it,” he said, adding, “I don’t know anything about it.”
In truth, America’s reservoir of health experts has
long been starved of support. From 2001 to 2017, the
CDC’s funding for state and local preparedness has
been cut by a third, and the Hospital Preparedness
Program within Health and Human Services has been
halved. Between 2008 and 2019, local and state health
departments hemorrhaged more than 50,000 jobs—a
quarter of their workforce, according to the National
Association of County and City Health Officials. And
the Trump Administration made the problem worse.
The President has yet to even nominate people for
165 of roughly 750 key Senate-confirmed federal
government positions—including several high-level
global health roles that would have been crucial in
coordinating an all-government response.
With in-house experts sidelined, Trump’s White
House became an echo chamber for yes-men. His
late-January restrictions on travel from China ought
to have bought time for a sustained, monthslong
effort to mitigate the spread of the pathogen. In-
stead, Trump and his aides frittered away weeks on
a self-congratulatory victory tour. “We have con-
tained this,” White House economic adviser Larry
Kudlow said on Feb. 25. “I won’t say airtight, but
pretty close to airtight.”
For weeks, current and former public-health of-
ficials tried in vain to get the President’s attention,
pushing him both publicly and privately to prepare
^
Trump and Fauci,
at the microphone,
address reporters in
the Rose Garden on
March 13
EVAN VUCCI—AP
