I would like to address the "plan" you have given us as to how you would handle our current COVID-19 crisis.

It is interesting that you noted former President Barack Obama’s 2014 warning that there will be an airborne disease that we may have to deal with. That notice was also about the same time that Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health requested $3.7 million of taxpayer money to give to the Chinese virology lab in Wuhan, China, so they could continue their study of viruses. Then in 2016, the Obama administration gave us a 69-page “how to” book, plus a 2017 warning to President Donald Trump on handling a pandemic.

I have two questions for you.

First, why was the Obama administration so sure that it was inevitable? Did they know something the rest of us did not?

Second, since they were so sure this disease would appear here, why did they not take the initiative at that time to ensure that our stockpiles of needed supplies and equipment were safely in place and ready to use? That could have been a good legacy of his presidency. And you, as the next president, would have been saved a lot of valuable time and pain and agony. Probably the loss of life would have been far less than we have experienced.

As to listening to your daily briefings, of course you should do that. But when the World Health Organization and other health advisers are telling you it is not a problem, you might choose to just keep an eye on it for a while. But you finally realize that you are being misled and decide to jump into action. You close the travel from China and are called all sorts of names such as racist, xenophobe, etc. for that effort. You immediately put your Health and Human Services secretary in charge of your team as that is that department’s job. But there are so many moving parts to this crisis, no stockpiles of equipment for one that you might need to appoint an additional person to take charge of organizing all of these parts. Then you feel that the innocent citizens of this country need to be kept up-to-date on what is happening, so you and your team give comprehensive and detailed briefings every day for at least six weeks. This is where I have a serious problem with your plan because what you offered is exactly what Trump and his incredibly competent team have undertaken and accomplished. Perhaps you should have listened to some of those briefings.

In attempting to not alienate our trading partners, you might need to keep in mind the words of a very wise philosopher who said to “keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer.” The Chinese Communist Party and government is not and never has been a friend to the United States. We, therefore, need to be ever vigilant and pay attention to what they do and how they are doing it. We can only hope that this pandemic has done much to open people’s eyes to what goes on around us.

Sue Jones