Two decades of pandemic war games failed to account for Donald Trump

Two decades of pandemic war games failed to account for Donald Trump

Pandemic war games didn’t predict US chaos

Two decades of scenarios that planned for a pandemic foresaw leaky travel bans, a scramble for vaccines and disputes between state and federal leaders — but none could anticipate the current levels of dysfunction in the United States. On the contrary, last year, the country was ranked top in the Global Health Security Index, which graded 195 countries in terms of how well-prepared they were to fight disease outbreaks. President Donald Trump even held up a copy of the report during a White House briefing on 27 February, declaring: “We’re rated number one.” As he spoke, SARS-CoV-2 was already spreading undetected across the country.

Nature | 13 min read