Unprepared for the Attacks; Preparing for Flu Pandemic

It was, as I recall, St. Ronnie Raygun who closed U.S. Public Health Hospitals from coat to coast and gutted the Public Health Department.

Unprepared for the Attacks; Preparing for Flu Pandemic:

Whatever it meant for politics, for many government agencies and those who ran them, Sept. 11, 2001, was a life-changing experience. Tommy G. Thompson, then the secretary of health and human services, had called a meeting that morning with a group of scientists to discuss the threat of pandemic flu.

The meeting was canceled as Thompson struggled to organize a delivery of emergency medical supplies to New York City. But in the aftermath of 9/11 and that fall's anthrax scare, it became clear to him that the United States was seriously unprepared for major emergencies.