DigitalDrifter
Diamond Member
Here's the full quote:
“Scientists and doctors cannot tell us where or when the next pandemic will strike, or how severe it will be, but most agree: At some point, we are likely to face another pandemic"
We were caught unprepared by a pandemic 9/11. The failures began long before Trump.
“Scientists and doctors cannot tell us where or when the next pandemic will strike, or how severe it will be, but most agree: At some point, we are likely to face another pandemic"
We were caught unprepared by a pandemic 9/11. The failures began long before Trump.
April 3, 2020
This week the United States reached a grim milestone when the number of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic surpassed 2,977 — the number killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Now that a pandemic 9/11 has befallen out nation, we need to ask ourselves: Why does it always seem to take a tragedy to wake us up to danger?
Before 9/11, we had many warning signs that our homeland was in peril. Terrorists had launched a string of escalating attacks: the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center; the 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia; the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. Despite the warnings, we didn’t take the coming danger seriously enough — and were caught unprepared on 9/11.
The same is true with covid-19. Before this pandemic, we had many warning signs that our homeland was in peril: the 2002 SARS outbreak; the 2003 resurgence of H5N1 avian flu; the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak; the 2012 MERS outbreak; the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Despite the warnings, we didn’t take the danger seriously enough — and were caught unprepared for covid-19.
At least on 9/11, we had an excuse for being surprised. Few could have expected that terrorists armed with box cutters would turn planes into missiles and use them to strike us here at home. The failure to anticipate 9/11 was, like Pearl Harbor, a failure of imagination.
We Were Caught Unprepared by a Pandemic 9/11. The Failures Began Long Before Trump.
Before this pandemic, we had many warning signs that our homeland was in peril: the 2002 SARS outbreak; the 2003 resurgence of H5N1 avian flu; the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak; the 2012 MERS outbreak; the 2014 Ebola outbreak. There’s no excuse for our unpreparedness.
www.aei.org