[vharuck]

>But you are right that other people looked into it, but I just have the impression that most of us really didn't care (including myself)

I'm with you about not caring enough about pandemics before. But this is where bureaucracy can shine: hire somebody whose entire job is to care about a niche thing. They usually don't need a huge budget to get a good foundational plan set up: one person, a computer, a phone, and proper security clearance.

One of the problems with the current administration isn't that they value some things less, but they have a drive to undo their predecessors' work.

[pbhjpbhj]

In the case of Trump, my impression is he purposefully set out to undo anything Obama had done as some sort of weird, childish, vendetta. That aside, in general though I think these things happen because rulers are looking to reduce taxation for the rich, and things like "pandemic response team" are pretty well hidden from public view, and can usually blagged ("we kept 10 million face masks as an emergency reserve" fading to mention that's a day's worth, say, or that they were out of date, or not the right type of mask).