West Wing Reads How the White House Prepared for a Pandemic

How the White House Prepared for a Pandemic The Trump Administration “was well aware of the threat of a pandemic before the novel coronavirus emerged,” Joel Zinberg and Tomas Philipson write in The Wall Street Journal. In fact, a White House report produced last September laid the groundwork for President Trump’s historic push for a vaccine, now known as Operation Warp Speed. “The report discussed how the lack of private market incentives had led to underinvestment in developing and using innovative technologies that can quickly produce vaccines for a new virus . . . When Covid-19 appeared a few months later, the administration expeditiously applied the report’s lessons on the value of public-private partnerships to speed vaccine innovation and production.” Now, “new vaccines are being developed at previously unimaginable speed.” Click here to read more. “President Trump recently delivered on our recommendation to suspend the payroll tax . . . The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Trump's tax deferral may put $100 billion worth of extra pay back in the pockets of U.S. workers through year-end,” Stephen Moore and Alfredo Ortiz write in RealClearMarkets. “Chicago police officers have been retiring at double the normal rate recently, raising concerns that the number of new hires won’t keep pace with the number leaving,” Frank Main reports. “Who wants to stay in this environment? . . . The mayor doesn’t back us,” the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President said. Read more in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Science is one of the strongest weapons that we have against this virus, which is why President Trump has enlisted our unrivaled research community in the fight. Since the start of the pandemic, the Trump administration has taken several actions to engage scientists in academia, industry, and government to understand and defeat this disease,” writes Kelvin Droegemeier, President Trump’s science advisor, for the Washington Examiner.