I have no doubt that Robert Kadlec was a great soldier that loves his country and is dedicated to his focus now that he has compromised his standing by hiding his relationship with the company he founded. Power is not handled well by a lot of people. That is the case here.
Trump and his administration are lined with ideologues. There basically is nothing else. That is what happened here. I think Mr. Kadlec has a lot to explain in regard to his past relationship with a company that has benefited from his current office. He also needs to explain why the national strategic reserve was moved out of the CDC?
Mr. Kadlec has a lot of explaining to do. He needs to explain his relationship with his past company and it's current contracts. He needs to explain the length of those contracts, the cost of the vaccines and the lack of bidding. He also needs to explain why the national strategic reserve was moved out of the CDC?
Additionally, which only proves the danger of ideologies both in elections as candidates and as leaders, the administration of Mr. Kadlec was partisan and caused plenty of problems for the USA.
Rather than a machine that President Obama wanted to put in place to manufacture enormous amounts of N-95 masks... (The article is specific about that.) ...he Trump White House called up a sterilizing machine from Ohio to clean existing N95 masks.
It is completely and absolutely unconscionable to have crippled the doctors, nurses, and caregivers by not having an enormous number of N95 in the strategic national reserve. Obama not only recognized that but, took it one step further. President Obama wanted to purchase a machine that produces those very important masks, but, Kadlec canceled the purchase and institutions of such measures to protect the country. THAT FACT boggles the mind. How can a man involved in the study of biological and chemical weapons in the USA military not prioritize N95 masks? None of this makes sense in the extreme.
Robert Kadlec was a USA soldier. He was a good soldier and a patriot. He studied some of the deepest concerns of the USA military, biological and chemical weapons. We are still seeing primitive weapons of this nature at work with the Assad regime. It isn't as though they simply disappeared because of international conventions. But, Kadlec became highly focused on smallpox and anthrax. What did he think would be the first priority to protect the American people should such warfare be released? Vaccines? Sure. Absolutely, but, who is going to administer them and why would it not be obvious to Kadlec that health care professionals were high on the list of people to protect in the USA? N95 masks are that protection.
President Obama's plans MUST be reinstated and I would suggest regional partners in the USA even consider purchasing such machines and put them into action should this horrible virus not abate with the economic priorities of opening state's prohibitions and removing "Stay At Home" orders. If every region of the country owned its own N95 production masks the people would be well served and protected.
Think how perfect such preparedness prioritized by President Obama would be especially now. Consider the N95 masks were being sold to China and exported in large numbers only to have the states bidding against each other and running up enormous debt were then importing the masks back to the USA again.
President Obama's preparedness for the N95 masks did not need the global supply chain. No other country would need to be begged to provide absolutely important supplies. Obama had this. He knew the best way forward and it was CANCELLED. It was canceled by a President that absolutely hated the first black president and his henchman without any oversight. And why, oh why, was there no oversight? Because there was also a degree of corruption considering the changes of authority over these efforts and the choice of a former business of Mr. Kadlec.
It is unfortunate Mr. Kadlec could not convince Trump of the brilliant idea of President Obama. The N95 masks production machine was canceled, not postponed, because it was ordered by President Obama, a black democrat.
These are the pitfalls of ideologues. This is the danger of a media source like FOX News that incubates and propagates such ideologies for the convenience of hostile politics to elect a populous president.
There needs to be, and you guessed it, an investigation into why such important measures by the Obama White House were canceled imperiling our doctors and nurses that have seen losses of their peers. This is not a minor, oh well, that Trump and his regular screw-ups. People have died that should still be here.
May 4, 2020
By Jon Swaine, Robert O'Harrow, Jr. and Aaron C. Davis
After Robert Kadlec (click here) was confirmed as President Trump’s top official for public health preparedness in 2017, he began pressing to increase government stocks of a smallpox vaccine. His office ultimately made a deal to buy up to $2.8 billion of the vaccine from a company that once paid Kadlec as a consultant, a connection he did not disclose on a Senate questionnaire when he was nominated.
Under the agreement struck last year with Emergent BioSolutions, Kadlec’s office at the Department of Health and Human Services is paying more than double the price per dose it had previously paid for the drug. Because Emergent is the only licensed maker of the vaccine, Kadlec’s office arrived at the price through negotiations with the company rather than through bidding....
