But we Americans have very short memories including myself because I didn't remember anything about this and I lived through it as a well versed in politics adult. We sometimes tend to forget but what is amusing is that someone like Biden is now all about his wisdom and what he would do with no mention of his past mistakes. Take a listen to a remarkable admission that I'm betting not very many Americans will hear. Think they will be playing this clip on CNN, MSNBC? A headline in the Washington Post or New York Times? Don't bet on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c2PmErlEzQ
A very long Politico article that also covers Ebola and some of the stuff about Trump but I'm only going to post the stuff on H1N1 as it relates to Biden. I love this headline.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...1-virus-232992
Biden has fought a pandemic before. It did not go smoothly.
The Obama administration's ability to stop the swine flu came down to luck, one former aide says.
It was April 2009 and the 3-month-old Obama administration was desperately grappling with the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression when homeland security adviser John Brennan arrived at the Oval Office to warn the president and Vice President Joe Biden of a new crisis: H1N1, the swine flu virus, was showing signs of rapid spread in Mexico, while cases were popping up in California and Texas.
Brennan pointed out that the Spanish flu — the deadliest pandemic in U.S. history — was an H1N1 strain. “It made their eyebrows go up,” Brennan says now, recalling Biden’s reaction in particular.
Brennan pointed out that the Spanish flu — the deadliest pandemic in U.S. history — was an H1N1 strain. “It made their eyebrows go up,” Brennan says now, recalling Biden’s reaction in particular.
The next week, Biden made good on his pledge — and set off a deluge of criticism. In an interview on NBC’s “Today,” Biden said he wouldn’t advise his family to fly on planes or ride the subway.
“I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places right now," Biden said. "It’s not that it’s going to Mexico, it’s that you are in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the aircraft.”
Airlines angrily accused Biden of fearmongering. Media reports noted that Biden’s pessimism contrasted sharply with the reassurances President Barack Obama had given a day earlier, when he said there was no need to panic even as he declared a national health emergency. In a matter of hours, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew were summoned to the White House and assignedto clean up the mess Biden made: “Nip it in the bud,” LaHood said, recalling their instructions.
By 4 p.m., the three officials were hosting a news conference and backing away from the vice president’s words.
The snafu was the first of many scrambles and setbacks by the Obama administration in its initial response to the swine flu. POLITICO interviewed almost two dozen people, including administration officials, members of Congress and outsiders who contended with the administration’s response, and they described a litany of sadly familiar obstacles: vaccine shortfalls, fights over funding and sometimes contradictory messaging.
“It is purely a fortuity that this isn’t one of the great mass casualty events in American history,” Ron Klain, who was Biden’s chief of staff at the time, said of H1N1 in 2019. “It had nothing to do with us doing anything right. It just had to do with luck.
If anyone thinks that this can’t happen again, they don’t have to go back to 1918, they just have to go back to 2009, 2010 and imagine a virus with a different lethality, and you can just do the math on that.”
It isn't all critical and even tries to give Biden some credit but Klain can't take back those words he uttered.
Read on if you want.
