Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Tuesday blamed President Donald Trump for a shortage of respiratory masks during the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, saying he “wasted” the national stockpile despite previous reports that pointed to the Obama administration.
In a Twitter post that linked to an interview with a member of former President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, Hillary Clinton said it was the Trump administration who was at fault for not having a large enough supply of masks.
“Everyone seeking to understand the extent of Trump’s botched response to COVID-19 must recognize that Trump wasted one of the country’s best weapons to fight a pandemic: The Strategic National Stockpile of protective equipment,” Hillary Clinton tweeted.
Everyone seeking to understand the extent of Trump’s botched response to COVID-19 must recognize that Trump wasted one of the country’s best weapons to fight a pandemic: The Strategic National Stockpile of protective equipment. washingtonmonthly.com/2020/04/21/how…
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Hillary Clinton’s didn’t specify how Trump misused the stockpile, but it linked to an interview in Washington Monthly with Richard Clarke, Bill Clinton’s chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council,.
He said Trump was warned by the CIA in January of the impending pandemic and should have immediately ordered the replenishing of the stockpile.
Respirator masks, along with other personal protection equipment – or PPE, has been in short supply at many health and medical facilities following the outbreak of coronavirus disease-2019, or COVID, in the United States since the beginning of the year.
“Once the CIA warned Trump of a coming pandemic in January, his administration should have immediately ordered more such equipment to meet the coming surge,” Clarke said. “That he didn’t left American hospitals overwhelmed.”
However, Bloomberg News said in a March 17 report that the stockpile was depleted under the Obama administration, which distributed respirator masks to help stem the H1N1, or swine flu, outbreak in 2009.
In 2015, government scientists warned that a severe flu outbreak infecting 20 to 30 percent of the population would require at least 1.7 billion N95 masks. But Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Congress in February that the federal government had just 12 million such masks along with 30 million surgical ones. He said there were another 5 million N95 masks that may have passed their expiration date.
In 2006, Congress provided supplemental funds to add 104 million N95 masks and 52 million surgical masks in an effort to prepare for a flu pandemic.
However, during the H1N1 influenza outbreak, about three-quarters of the federal stockpile was distributed and the inventory was not replaced, according to Bloomberg.
Afterward, a federally backed task force advised the Obama administration to replenish the stockpile. But that never happened.
“Our association is unaware of any major effort to restore the stockpile to cover that drawdown,” Charles Johnson, the president of the International Safety Equipment Association, told the Washington Examiner.
The introduction to the Washington Monthly Q&A blamed that on “Tea Party Republicans and sequestration,” citing an April 3 report by Propublica.
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