Have U.S. presidents prepared the country for a pandemic?

Brut America

Since Bill Clinton's term, U.S. presidents have been aware of a risk of a pandemic. But how did they choose to prepare for one?

Transcript

00:00It is vital that our nation discuss and address the threat of pandemic flu now.

00:05If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.

00:09We have to put in place an infrastructure, not just here at home but globally, that allows

00:15us to see it quickly, isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly.

01:00With the threat of bioterrorism knocking at our door, we can't afford to be caught off

01:09guard because it's only in the movies like Outbreak that we can save the world from a

01:14deadly virus in just 24 hours.

01:17And this year alone, the initiative is expanding its activities in a number of key areas.

01:23These include surveillance, medical response, building a stockpile of pharmaceuticals, and

01:29research and development.

02:24The Bush administration, when they came in, abolished the office altogether until, of course, 9-11.

02:45Well, didn't George W. Bush read your book and then from your book alerted his staff

02:51and HHS to mobilize?

02:53With the Bush behind it, the entire administration took it seriously.

02:59They passed legislation and the billions of dollars which created the stockpile.

03:06It put money into vaccine technology development, vaccine manufacturing, and also

03:14developed preparedness plans.

03:21We developed these plans and that curve concept in 2006 in the then-Bush White House, when

03:33we tried to apply it to a pandemic influenza strategy.

03:51Members of the cabinet conducted a exercise related to the nation's preparedness to deal

04:01with a pandemic flu event.

04:04The president's made perfectly clear that our number one priority is in the event of a

04:08pandemic is to save lives.

04:10The president has a plan to do just that.

04:21Early on in 2005, President Bush requested $7.1 billion to boost vaccine production

04:32capacities to stockpile antivirals and boost state and local emergency preparedness.

04:39Congress responded by appropriating $1.1 billion less than the president requested.

04:46Since 2007, it has been sort of the flip side of that.

04:53This committee has been consistently pushing to do more than both the executive branch

05:00and the Senate appeared to be comfortable doing.

05:04In April of 2007, the committee proposed nearly $1 billion in supplemental funding for

05:10pandemic activities.

05:12But that investment never saw the light of day because that bill was vetoed.

05:42I saw everybody with these and I thought, OK, just for protection to go ahead and wear it.

06:01In 2004, this committee on both sides of the aisle began asking questions about the

06:19insufficient supplies of vaccines and fluctuating demands for seasonal flu virus.

06:27Five years later, it's clear that we're still using 1950s era technology and we are years

06:34away from state of the art technologies that have been in use in other countries for at

06:38least a decade.

06:40U.S. vaccine production capacity is still completely inadequate.

06:44H1N1 vaccine supplies are lagging far behind the need.

07:26We didn't receive funds to replace those masks, protective gear and the antivirals that we

07:40use for H1N1.

07:56There may and likely will come a time in which we have both an airborne disease that is

08:09deadly. And in order for us to deal with that effectively, we have to put in place an

08:18infrastructure, not just here at home, but globally that allows us to see it quickly,

08:24isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly.

08:26We didn't get everything right in Ebola and we were late on many things and we made some

08:30wrong choices, so on and so forth.

08:33But what we did was we had a process that everyone in the government understood how it

08:37worked.

09:23We don't have a sustained level of funding necessarily.

09:53A line item for pandemic influenza, for example, that would give us great confidence that we

09:58would have a sustained uninterrupted funding stream.

10:02To use a defense analogy, we're operating with about a half an aircraft carrier of

10:07resources to basically do this mission, a national security mission to basically protect

10:13320 million people.

10:16And that's a challenge.

10:17My first question is, you said that you don't take responsibility, but you did disband the

10:22White House pandemic office and the officials that were working in that office left this

10:27administration abruptly.

10:28So what responsibility do you take to that?

10:30And the officials that worked in that office said that you that the White House lost

10:33valuable time because that office wasn't disbanded.

10:36What do you make of that?

10:38Well, I just think it's a nasty question, because what we've done is and Tony has said

10:43numerous times that we've saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing.

10:48And when you say me, I didn't do it.

10:50I don't know anything about it.

10:51I mean, you say you say we did that.

10:53I don't know anything about it.

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