ICYMI: Fake Nurse failed to replenish PPE stockpile

Fake Nurse Lauren Underwood continued her media tour bemoaning the lack of PPE, but as the Washington Examiner reported today, it was Fake Nurse Lauren who failed to replenish the national PPE stockpile during her time working in the Obama Administration.

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Obama administration health official now a congressional critic of Trump over mask shortages
Washington Examiner
Naomi Lim and Emily
April 24, 2020
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/obama-administration-health-official-now-a-congressional-critic-of-trump-over-mask-shortages

Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois, like other House Democrats, has been a sharp critic of President Trump over shortages of masks and other personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic.

But Underwood is alone in her firsthand experience of helping the federal government plan stockpiles of the equipment, which is used by health and medical professionals serving on the front lines of the outbreak. And what critics call a failure by the Obama administration to resupply the gear is now being turned back on Underwood as the first-term lawmaker seeks reelection.

Unlike Underwood’s Democratic colleagues, her experience prior to joining Congress in 2019 as an Obama administration appointee working in the Department of Health and Human Services touched on the country’s depleted stockpile of protective face masks.

Fast-forward to 2020, a tweet from Underwood’s campaign account last month described the shortage of personal protective equipment as “ unacceptable.” She lamented the dearth of hospital and medical gear in the national strategic stockpile and urged Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act.

“So many states have had to go out on their own because there is very little domestic manufacturing capability,” the House member from Illinois, 33, said this week during a virtual town hall. “I think it’s really important, and I continue to call on the president to activate something called the Defense Production Act, which would allow for increased production of necessary supplies to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.”

During her first congressional bid, in which she ousted a Republican incumbent, Underwood pointed to her experience in HHS preparing for and responding to public health crises triggered by infectious diseases, natural disasters, and bioterrorism threats.

Before she ran for Congress, Underwood, a registered nurse, was an HHS Obama appointee from November 2014 to January 2017. Her role: a special assistant, and then a senior adviser, to the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, Nicole Lurie, during the MERS, Ebola, and Zika outbreaks.

Part of Underwood’s work would have dealt with the national strategic stockpile, which was not replenished of N95 masks after the H1N1 pandemic that started in 2009.

In her position, Underwood says she “advised and supported” Lurie on “policy development, program implementation, and strategic planning” for pandemic management and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. BARDA invests in medical countermeasures and oversees research for the national strategic stockpile, including items such as beds and respirators, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention managed the supply during the Obama years.

The H1N1 outbreak caused equipment shortages, including a two- to three-year backlog of N95 mask orders. During the crisis, three-quarters of the $325 million stockpile’s inventory was distributed, but it was not later replaced. Rather, the Obama and Trump administrations focused on other public health threats posed by anthrax, smallpox, and radiological or nuclear attacks.

Instead of procuring N95 masks after the emergence of H1N1, priority was placed on creating new types of masks since it was thought that N95 masks could be bought easily and quickly on the commercial market after the crisis had passed.

“We put in place a contract for a high-speed mask manufacturing line” and “developed a strategy for reusable masks,” Lurie, the former assistant secretary for preparedness to whom Underwood reported, told the Washington Examiner.

But Lurie pointed the finger at the Trump administration. She said that it did not bring the high-speed manufacturing line plan “to completion” and was “slow to execute” the reusable mask strategy.

“This administration had three whole years to rightsize the stockpile with regard to masks and PPE, and they made choices to invest in other, questionably needed products,” she added.

Lurie also said that senior officials within the Trump administration “understood that a pandemic was likely by very early January.”

“Had they not been in denial mode and begun the surge production of masks, PPE, ventilators, and other essential elements back then, we would be in a very different place now. It would have saved many lives,” she said.

Underwood’s office did not return a request for comment on her work as an Obama administration appointee, the national strategic stockpile depletion, or her criticism of the Trump administration.

She is not the only person from the Obama administration facing pressure over scrutinizing personal protective equipment shortages.

Presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been pressed on the Obama administration’s inaction with regard to the stockpile, casting blame on his successors as well.

“We spent a lot of time. I was not part of it. Our administration spent a lot of time working with the incoming Trump administration,” Biden began last month, before not directly answering the question posed by CNN.