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  • 2020-03-02 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Obama Declare Swine Flu an Emergency Only After 'Millions' Were Infected? (en)
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  • On Feb. 28, 2020, the website PJ Media published an article claiming that U.S. President Barack Obama had waited until millions were infected and thousands were dead from swine flu, the H1N1 virus, before declaring a public health emergency in 2009. The article, which was presented as a fact check, got several simple details wrong. In response to criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump's handling of a recent outbreak of a new coronavirus, the PJ Media article opined that Obama had been lackadaisical about his response to a health emergency back in 2009, and that Trump by comparison had done his job admirably. PJ Media writes: There are several factual inaccuracies in this excerpt alone. For instance, PJ media writes that H1N1 became a pandemic in April 2009. But that's not the case. The disease emerged in April but wasn't declared a pandemic until June. The excerpt also claims that Obama declared a public health emergency on what was already a pandemic in October 2009. But this is also wrong. Obama declared a national emergency, not a public health emergency, in October 2009. The Obama administration declared a public health emergency in April, months before swine flu was declared a pandemic. At the time that the Obama administration declared a public health emergency, only 20 confirmed cases (not over a million) of H1N1 existed in the United States. The New York Times reported on April 26, 2009: PJ Media also inaccurately presented a video in the article as if it showed Obama addressing the swine flu after it had already become a pandemic. Again, that simply isn't the case. When Obama addressed the nation about swine flu, or H1N1, in April 2009, the disease was just starting to spread. It wouldn't be until June 2009 that the swine flu would be declared a pandemic. Here's Obama's April 2009 address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imi5M38n4pc&feature=emb_title The swine flu pandemic spread quickly across the United States starting in April 2009. There were approximately 60 million cases over the course of the following year, which resulted in nearly 275,000 hospitalizations and more than 12,000 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a detailed timeline of this pandemic on its website. It shows that the CDC first activated its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) on April 22, 2009. At the time, there were only two confirmed cases in the United States. On April 25, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern, and the following day the Obama administration did the same. At that time, there were about 20 confirmed cases. Despite the CDC's efforts, the swine flu continued to spread. Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, renewed the emergency declaration on July 24, 2009, and then again on Oct. 1, 2009. On Oct. 24, 2009, Obama declared a national emergency that gave officials more resources to fight the pandemic. The Associated Press reported: In sum, the PJ Media article claimed that Obama waited until millions of people were infected with H1N1 before he declared an emergency. But that isn't the case. The Obama administration started to address H1N1 just as the disease emerged in April 2009. A public health emergency was declared on April 26, 2009, when there were about 20 confirmed cases in the United States. The Obama administration renewed this declaration twice in the ensuing months before declaring a national emergency in October 2009. (en)
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