Is Biden better at pandemics than Trump?

[dolphins4life]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sick-infectious-diseases-spread-across-124244896.html

The LAST thing we need right now is another pandemic.

It would be far worse because people still think of this as the boy who cried wolf.

Let's see if Biden can stop infectious diseases from entering the country.

[masterfins]

People don't want to admit it but Trump was actually very good at trying to keep the pandemic from starting, and was good at pushing for trying to contain it.  Part of the problem was that people hated him so much politically that they ignored him and mocked him over it.

[CF DolFan]

Part of the problem was that people hated him so much politically that they ignored him and mocked him over it.

This has nothing to do with the pandemic. The truth is both sides refuse to admit anything positive from the other as every single thing is being used for political gain. 

[Dave Gray]

This question doesn't really make sense.  You can't just 1:1 compare Bush handling bird flu, Obama with H1N1, Trump with COVID, and Biden with whatever he's gonna deal with.

You have to judge each case individually and in most cases, there's calculated risk and with the benefit of hindsight, each administration will do some good things and some bad things.

Trump was bad in that he (or his team) dismantled the pandemic response team, so there was a possibility that it would've made a difference early and we would've been more prepared or had more control of the rate of spread to keep hospitals from being overcrowded, but we don't really know how much, as COVID was gonna get everywhere eventually.

Trump was good in dealing with the vaccine rapid response creation.  He didn't play around with getting the funds where they needed to go and he let the science lead the way.

He was bad in the downplaying of the severity of the virus and he made a political choice to pretend it was no big deal, because the reality was that it was going to hurt the economy, which he didn't want.

He did take the vaccine and tell others to get it at first, but he was hot and cold on that, so it was a bit tepid.

So, overall -- not great but a mixed bag and we got the vaccine created and the beginning of distribution channels.

I don't blame Trump at all from COVID coming into America and spreading all around.  That was inevitable.

[Spider-Dan]

People don't want to admit it but Trump was actually very good at trying to keep the pandemic from starting, and was good at pushing for trying to contain it.

No, he did the opposite: he downplayed the severity of the danger even though he was fully aware how deadly the virus was.

"I wanted to always play it down," Trump told author Bob Woodward on March 19, days after he declared a national emergency. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." [...]

According to the interviews, CNN and The Washington Post reported, Trump knew the virus was dangerous in early February.

"It goes through the air," Trump said in a recording of a Feb. 7 interview with Woodward. "That's always tougher than the touch. You don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed.

"And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus."

A week after that interview, Trump said at a White House briefing that the number of U.S. coronavirus cases "within a couple days is going to be down close to zero."

Trump lied about COVID to the public to make it seem less serious than it was, because he thought that would benefit him politically.  Not only did he cause hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths while in office, but the COVID denialism he created and nurtured continued on to kill others past his time in office, and is directly contributing to general vaccine hesitancy in this country for decades to come.

P.S. To re-emphasize what I've said before: the US had the worst COVID response of any industrialized country, and it isn't close.  The idea that anyone would consider this "very good" is puzzling.

[masterfins]

No, he did the opposite: he downplayed the severity of the danger even though he was fully aware how deadly the virus was.

"I wanted to always play it down," Trump told author Bob Woodward on March 19, days after he declared a national emergency. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." [...]

According to the interviews, CNN and The Washington Post reported, Trump knew the virus was dangerous in early February.

"It goes through the air," Trump said in a recording of a Feb. 7 interview with Woodward. "That's always tougher than the touch. You don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed.

"And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus."

A week after that interview, Trump said at a White House briefing that the number of U.S. coronavirus cases "within a couple days is going to be down close to zero."

Trump lied about COVID to the public to make it seem less serious than it was, because he thought that would benefit him politically.  Not only did he cause hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths while in office, but the COVID denialism he created and nurtured continued on to kill others past his time in office, and is directly contributing to general vaccine hesitancy in this country for decades to come.

P.S. To re-emphasize what I've said before: the US had the worst COVID response of any industrialized country, and it isn't close.  The idea that anyone would consider this "very good" is puzzling.

I disagree. in Late January Trump banned travel from China.  On March 12th Trump banned travel from Europe.  On March 13th Trump declared a National Emergency to release about $50 Billion in funding to aid states.  Meanwhile Pelosi is out encouraging public gatherings in San Francisco (Chinatown) in February, basically giving the middle finger to Trump.  In NYC Mayor DeBlasio and his Health Commissioner (Barbot) downplayed Trump's warnings and encouraged people to take the subway and attend parades in February and March, even insinuating that Trump's travel bans were racist.  It's no wonder that NYC became the epicenter of the pandemic in the US.  It was Govenor Cuomo of NY that was saying it's no big deal at the beginning of March.  After a month and a half of calling Trump racist over his efforts to try and stop the spread to the US, all of a sudden the same people are blaming him because THEY didn't heed his warnings.

[Spider-Dan]

Trump's own words are right there: he intentionally downplayed COVID even though he knew it was much more dangerous than he was telling the public.  What else do you need to say?

It's telling that the both-sides examples that you cite of Democrats are from February and early March.  The first confirmed case of community transmission (i.e. not from travel or direct contact with a traveler) in the US was on February 26, 2020.  You aren't talking about what Trump was saying in April, and May, and June because that's when Trump was busy lying to Americans about how quickly COVID would be done with.