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Blast from the Past: Swine flu comes home to roost (2009)


RedZone

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Sorta jives with dictator trump firing the US Pandemic Response Team in 2018....which he won't even own and lied about.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/apr/27/swine-flu-mexico-us-pandemic-preparedness

"The Republicans essentially succeeded. The Senate version of the stimulus plan included no money whatsoever for pandemic preparednes"

 

 

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When House appropriations committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900m for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse – with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the US economy.

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Sound familiar???

SMDH

The attack on pandemic preparation became so central to the GOP strategies that the AP reported in February: "Republicans, meanwhile, plan to push for broader and deeper tax cuts, to trim major spending provisions that support Democrats' longer-term policy goals, and to try to knock out what they consider questionable spending items, such as $870m to combat the flu and $400m to slow the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases."

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SUSAN COLLINS GETS CALLED OUT FOR NOT SUPPORTING PANDEMIC FUNDING IN 2009

As President Donald Trump continues to blame former President Barack Obama for the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009 in an effort to make his response to coronavirus look better, reporters rediscovered that Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) blocked a major pandemic funding package offered by Democrats.

Collins insisted that the $870 million package to fight the just beginning swine flu pandemic that year by cutting it from the economic stimulus bill, drawing outrage from Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), who served as House Appropriations Chairman.

 

“Whether or not this influenza strain turns out to have pandemic potential, sooner or later some strain will,” Obey said. “We are not prepared today. Let’s hope we don’t need to be.”

Indeed, 12,000 Americans would die in the pandemic Obey warned would come. And now Trump is desperately trying to cast Obama and Democrats as the villains even though Republicans are the ones who sabotaged the response to that pandemic. Many of those deaths could have been prevented had they supported the funding package. But just like with the coronavirus today, Republicans didn’t care about American lives, especially Collins, who had the power to kill the funding according to reporters who covered her at the time.

 
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