Letter to the editor: US has been unprepared for years

For years Congress has taken its responsibility of being prepared for a pandemic like a game of hot potato. They have been kicking the can down the road to the next administration without any second thought of the consequences. This president found himself in the unenviable position of having to deal with this virus with the cupboards bare.

In 2007, the late Sen. Tom Coburn issued an oversight report titled “CDC Off Center.” The summary described it as a “review of how an agency tasked with fighting and preventing disease has spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars for failed prevention efforts, international junkets, and lavish facilities, but cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.”

Our national stockpile of masks and ventilators has been depleted since the outbreak of the swine flu pandemic of 2009. At the time, President George W. Bush warned of the consequences of unpreparedness in the case of a worldwide pandemic. The warning fell on deaf ears and Congress failed to act.

In 2017, the CDC spent over $1.1 billion on chronic disease prevention and health promotion, $215 million on environmental health, and $285 million on injury prevention, money that should have been spent on work the CDC was created to do.

Who do we blame for this? All we have to do is look in a mirror. It’s easy to blame the person in the White House. Instead we should be looking at those who have been in Congress for decades. In the private sector these individuals would have been fired years ago. Yet we keep them in control. Why?

Ed Liberatore

Turtle Creek