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Under Obama, the pandemic response team that Trump disbanded stopped SARSv1 (COVID is also known as SARSv2) from spreading out of China under essentially identical circumstances.

They also stopped Ebola from spreading, which is at least an order of magnitude worse than COVID.

That team operated internationally with the cooperation of local governments. When it was disbanded, many people warned the administration that it was leaving a huge public health gap, and that the decision would result in unchecked pandemics.

We’re lucky to have ended up with a COVID pandemic, and not something much worse.



Define worse. Ebola is much deadlier, but its kind of hard to spread a virus that causes you to bleed from your face.


Ebola’s R value is 2, which is enough to create large outbreaks if left unchecked.

The death rate is 50%, which is 100x higher than COVID’s 0.5% (which has been lowered to 0.125% with improved hospital care).

In the absence of a coordinated pandemic response, I count that as “worse”.


Many problems with your comment. First SARS occurred in 2003 before Obama. It was stopped primarily because it does not spread asymptomatically. SARS-COV-2 does. That is the difference.


> They also stopped Ebola from spreading, which is at least an order of magnitude worse than COVID.

Pure unmitigated ignorance.




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