Letters

At a recent COVID-19 press briefing, President Trump said, “Who would have thought?” in reference to the coronavirus pandemic.

Well, the experts were warning about the risk of a flu pandemic for years. Luciana Borio, the former U.S. director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, said in May 2018: “The threat of a pandemic flu is the number one health security concern.”

She and her group at the NSC were abolished by the Trump administration in mid-2018. John Bolton, with Trump’s blessing, led a “reorganization” at the NSC that hollowed out the biodefense preparedness that Obama had created.

In its wake, Rear Admiral Timothy Zimmer abruptly left his post (in May 2018) as the top U.S. official responsible for leading the response in the event of a deadly pandemic. He was not replaced.

As we all know, Trump has been eliminating anything and everything he can that Obama created. And we all know that Trump is a “very stable genius” who doesn’t believe in science, and he knows more than the generals.

We now have a real health crisis, and the experts and the organizations that were established to deal with them are gone or hollowed out.

Yesterday, Trump told the American people to relax, and he bragged about Friday’s stock market surge — following its crash during the prior several days.

After more bullying and threats by Trump, the Fed cut interest rates to zero … yet the stock market is poised to dive again.

Let’s all relax and enjoy some quiet time, in quarantine.

Dick Sheehan

Westhampton Beach