Hillary Clinton blamed President Trump for the shortages of protective equipment amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying he “wasted” the Strategic National Stockpile.
“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,” the former secretary of state tweeted Tuesday.
The tweet shared a piece from Washington Monthly, titled “How Trump Wasted the Best Tool He Had to Fight Coronavirus,” based on an interview with Richard Clarke, President Bill Clinton’s chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council and “the man [Bill Clinton] tasked with building the stockpile.”
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. https://t.co/5ABsuqCZnr
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 21, 2020
The Strategic National Stockpile has its origins in the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, which was established under Bill Clinton toward the end of his last term in office. In 2003, it was renamed the Strategic National Stockpile under President George W. Bush’s administration.
“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. That he didn’t left American hospitals overwhelmed. It left states having to claw to obtain the materials they need to save lives,” the story reads.
“Of course, it didn’t help that Trump did nothing to replenish or update the stockpile in his first three years in office; by mid-April, it had already distributed 90 percent of the stockpile’s supplies,” it adds.
Investigations by Bloomberg News and the Los Angeles Times found the Strategic National Stockpile was not replenished long before Trump was elected to the White House. The national shortage of N95 respirator masks can be traced back to after the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009 when the Obama administration was advised to replenish a national stockpile, but reportedly did not.
In 2009, the H1N1 outbreak hit the United States, leading to 274,304 hospitalizations, 12,469 deaths, and a depletion of N95 respirator masks.
A federally backed task force and a safety equipment organization both recommended to the Obama administration that the stockpile be replenished with the 100 million masks used during the H1N1 outbreak.
Charles Johnson, president of the International Safety Equipment Association, said that advice was never heeded.
“Our association is unaware of any major effort to restore the stockpile to cover that drawdown,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
Bloomberg News reported similar findings in March, noting, “After the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, which triggered a nationwide shortage of masks and caused a 2- to 3-year backlog [of] orders for the N95 variety, the stockpile distributed about three-quarters of its inventory and didn’t build back the supply.”
