Obama said U.S. wasn't 'at all ready' for worst-case swine flu scenario, response was based on 'best available science'

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'It was too early to tell how deadly this new virus would be,' Obama wrote in his upcoming memoir. 'But I wasn't interested in taking any chances.'

said his administration learned in 2009 that the United States wasn't"at all ready" for a health crisis., Obama wrote that when the World Health Organization declared the H1N1 virus—also known as swine flu—as the first global pandemic in decades, he ordered his team to evaluate how prepared the United States was for a"worst-case scenario."

"It was too early to tell how deadly this new virus would be," he said."But I wasn't interested in taking any chances."The former president also pointed out that his administration faced questions on how to produce and distribute vaccinations, as well as how to handle the possibility of closing schools and forcing quarantines. Obama said he was advised to let medical experts lead the way.

"My instructions to the public-health team were simple: decisions would be made based on the best available science, and we were going to explain to the public each step of our response—including detailing what we did and didn't know," Obama wrote."Over the course of the next six months, we did exactly that."

Sixty million Americans contracted H1N1, and the virus is estimated to have killed approximately 12,500 Americans over one year. Obama said the nation was lucky the swine flu was less deadly than originally thought. "News that the pandemic had abated by mid-2010 didn't generate headlines. Still, I took great pride in how well our team had performed," the former president wrote."Without fanfare or fuss, they not only helped keep the virus contained but strengthened our readiness for any future public-health emergency—which would make all the difference several years later, when the Ebola outbreak in West Africa triggered a full-blown panic.

 

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