CORONA VIRUS FACT CHECKS

Donald Trump’s actions on the Coronavirus: 

Question - Who'ya gonna believe? 

Answer - who do ya WANT to believe?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.

Not replaced by the Trump administration.

More than 30 programs the White House is proposing to Congress for “rescission,” a process of culling back money that was previously authorized.

Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer was the Trump administration's senior director for global health security and biodefense at the National Security Council. He left that post Tuesday as part of a reorganization under national security adviser John Bolton. He is not being replaced. The abrupt departure of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council means no senior administration official is now focused solely on global health security.

May 7, 2018 at 1:38 p.m. CDT  CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION

FY 2019 President's Budget (Dollars in Thousands)

https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2019/fy-2019-detail-table.pdf

Jeremy Konyndyk, who led foreign disaster assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Obama administration, “What this all adds up to is a potentially really concerning rollback of progress on U.S. health security preparedness.”

Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the NSC, spoke at a symposium at Emory University to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic. “The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern,” she told the audience. “Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no.”

There is no one in the White House tasked specifically to oversee a coordinated government-wide response in the event of a pandemic, since the post of senior director for global health security and biothreats on the national security council (NSC) was eliminated last May.

31 Dec 2019 11.42 EST - 

In its 2020 budget the Trump administration proposed a further 10% cut in CDC funding, equivalent to $750m. It zeroed out funding for epidemiology and laboratory capacity at state and local levels.

Mr Obama, who came into office shortly after the 2008 economic downturn, needed to quickly move to stymie a haemorrhaging economy. Mr Trump, on the other hand, inherited a relatively strong economy and was able to focus more closely on his many difficult campaign promises.