An ounce of prevention, the axiom says, is worth a pound of cure.
That appears to be particularly relevant as the United States prepares for the possibility of a coronavirus outbreak in this country. Globally, the virus has infected more than 80,000 people and led to nearly 3,000 deaths.
Those are relatively small numbers on a planet with about 7.5 billion people, but they call for an ounce of prevention. Dr. Alan Melnick, Clark County’s public health officer, says his department is paying close attention and is prepared for a local outbreak. He said local health care providers should be prepared for people traveling to outbreak locations or returning to the county from trips near outbreaks. Thus far, a case in Everett is the only one reported in Washington.
Marissa Armstrong, public information officer for Clark County Public Health, said the department is in contact with the state health department “to stay up to date on the outbreak and the latest state and federal guidance.” Clark County Public Health’s communicable disease team is also readying “internal processes and tools, such as databases for monitoring and identifying points of contacts at other institutions (for example schools and hospitals),” she said.
The key phrase in all of that is federal guidance. And it points out the Trump administration’s persistent myopia.
President Donald Trump this week has started publicly paying attention to the coronavirus — now that the outbreak has contributed to a downturn in the stock market because of concerns over the global economy. On Wednesday, the president addressed the nation in a press conference, after repeatedly insisting that coronavirus is “very well under control in our country.”
We hope that continues to be the case. But throughout his presidency, Trump has repeatedly sought to undermine this nation’s protections against outbreaks such as the coronavirus.
In early 2018, for example, the administration called for federal agencies to leave 39 of the 49 low-income countries where they were working to train disease detectives and build emergency operations centers. As Julia Belluz of Vox.com surmised at the time, “While it’s true that America has long been underprepared for a pandemic, the risks right now appear to be especially high.”
Later, for another example, the administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, leaving confusion as to how the nation would respond to an outbreak like the one it might soon face.
And on Feb. 11, in the midst of the global outbreak, Trump proposed a budget that includes large funding cuts to the Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control.
Meanwhile, the administration has been slow to develop a robust response to the coronavirus. Trump has requested $2.5 billion to limit the disease in this country, delivering the plan to Congress in a two-page summary. Critics note that when Ebola became a global concern, the Obama administration quickly designated a team to lead the response and filed a 28-page request with Congress detailing prevention efforts.
With ease of travel contributing to an interconnected world, pandemics are a growing concern. Americans are not about to shut themselves off from the rest of the globe and its opportunities for travel and economic growth, and that inevitably increases the risk of transmitting infectious diseases.
Ignoring that risk does not make it disappear. Neither does eschewing an ounce of prevention.
