Coronavirus: Did Trump's decision to nix pandemic team hinder response
In May 2018, President Donald Trump’s biodefense preparedness adviser
warned that a flu pandemic was the country’s No. 1 health security threat, and the U.S. was not prepared.
“We know that it cannot be stopped at the border,” Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, said at a symposium that day.
Borio left the Trump administration in 2019. Other high-level global health experts headed for the exits even earlier, after the White House
dismantled the National Security Council’s global health security office.
"Bolton’s chosen approach to NSC 'streamlining' involved decapitating and diluting the White House’s focus on pandemic threats," Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, wrote in
a rebuttal. "He eliminated the senior director position entirely, closed the biodefense directorate, and spread the remaining staff across other parts of the NSC."
Closing the pandemic office "clearly reflected the White House’s misplaced priorities and has proven to be a gross misjudgment," Konyndyk wrote.