So how did we get to this point? I found a review of coronaviruses published in 2015 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25720466/). Reading what we knew about this class of virus as of 2015, it is no wonder the Obama administration put together plans and agencies to deal with the next pandemic. What we are seeing now is all implied in what we knew 5 years ago. Those nations which learned from this work (China, South Korea, Singapore for example) have fared much better than those that didn’t (USA, Brazil, UK and to some extent Sweden) and those without competent governments and health care programs (much of South America). The Trump administration actually dismantled the programs that the Obama administration had set up. We shot ourselves in the foot with that one, as well as making it harder globally to deal with this virus.
So how did we get to this point? I found a review of coronaviruses published in 2015 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25720466/). Reading what we knew about this class of virus as of 2015, it is no wonder the Obama administration put together plans and agencies to deal with the next pandemic. What we are seeing now is all implied in what we knew 5 years ago. Those nations which learned from this work (China, South Korea, Singapore for example) have fared much better than those that didn’t (USA, Brazil, UK and to some extent Sweden) and those without competent governments and health care programs (much of South America). The Trump administration actually dismantled the programs that the Obama administration had set up. We shot ourselves in the foot with that one, as well as making it harder globally to deal with this virus.