There’s an ongoing joke on Twitter that there’s “always a Tweet” from Donald Trump’s past that contradicts his current actions. They’re a concrete example of how incredibly inconsistent he’s been on just about every issue.
A Joe Biden tweet from almost exactly a year ago has resurfaced that proves how, unlike Trump, he’s has remained consistent on the issues, especially the most important of the day, pandemics.
It also shows that he and former President Obama shared a mutual concern for pandemic preparedness long before COVID-19 hit. Their concern for the public’s health flies in the face of Trump, who has publicly downplayed the seriousness of the current pandemic at every turn.
“We are not prepared for a pandemic,” Biden wrote on Oct. 25, 2019.
“Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security,” the tweet continues. “We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores.”
In his tweet, Biden links to a Washington Post article listing nearly 200 nations that were unprepared for a widespread virus.
In the report by the Global Health Security Index the U.S. did well in five of the six benchmarks for preparedness. But the report cited the ongoing risks of terrorism, civil unrest and a lack faith in government as detrimental to potential pandemic response.
The report is eerily precient given the U.S.’s recent bouts of civil unrest and the anti-government fervor that has prevented many from adhering to masking and social distancing guidelines.
“Health security is a collective responsibility,” said Beth Cameron, vice president for global biological policy and programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative and one of the index’s leaders. “Countries need to know how prepared they are. And they need to know how prepared their neighbors are. Otherwise, we’ll never improve.”
The one-year anniversary of Biden’s prophetic tweet caused it to resurface, inspiring some great replies.
President Obama also noted that Biden was worried about pandemic preparedness long before the pandemic struck. “A year ago today, Joe Biden was talking about the leadership we need to get prepared for a pandemic, and he’s got a plan to get it under control, Obama tweeted.
“We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook,” Obama told supporters at a rally in Philadelphia. “They probably used it to prop up a wobbly table somewhere.”
The Obama administration briefed the incoming Trump administration about a hypothetical scenario that was worse than the 1918 flu that shut down major cities. However, they didn’t take it seriously.
The Trump administration proved how little they care about pandemic preparedness when former national security advisor John Bolton disbanded a unit on global health security and biodefense. The unit was created by the Obama administration as a response to the Ebola epidemic.
