Opinion. Way to go Joe. 500 K down and how many more? Sure 100 K can be tied directly to Biden since he came into office, but don’t forget that it was the Obama-Biden Administration that left us at a great disadvantage. According to the USA Today.
So don’t take my word for it, USA Today is not a Conservative news source. and they confirm the fact that Obama and Biden had other things on their mind. Again don’t take my word for it.
Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, has credited luck — and not the Obama administration response — with the fact that the swine flu did not kill more people. (Klain did not head up the response to the H1N1 virus, he was working for Biden at the time. He was, however, the administration’s Ebola czar.)
Fact check: Did the Obama administration deplete the federal stockpile of N95 masks?
Our rating: True
We rate this claim TRUE because it is supported by our research. There is no indication that the Obama administration took significant steps to replenish the supply of N95 masks in the Strategic National Stockpile after it was depleted from repeated crises. Calls for action came from experts at the time concerned for the country’s ability to respond to future serious pandemics. Such recommendations were, for whatever reason, not heeded.
Our fact-check sources:
- Department of Health and Human Services, Strategic National Stockpile: History
- Government Accountability Office, 2003 Report on Public Health Capacity
- Health Security, Personal Protective Equipment Supply Chain: Lessons Learned from Recent Public Health Emergency Responses
- Homeland Security Council, 2005 National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza
- National Institute of Health, The Strategic National Stockpile: Origin, Policy Foundations, and Federal Context
- 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community
MCENANY: “Yeah, it’s a really good question. It’s a really important question, perhaps I should redirect your question to President Obama who left the stockpile empty, and there was a USA Today fact-check of that. He left the cupboards bare, as the President noted, and USA Today said there’s no indication that the Obama Administration took significant steps to replenish the supply of N95 masks in the strategic national stockpile after it was depleted from repeated crises. So, at the H1N1 it was full, at the end of H1N1 it was empty, and President Obama left it empty, and took President Trump to refill it.”
