报道称，特朗普在5日的采访中就指责前总统奥巴马，称奥巴马政府什么都没有准备。但美国广播公司(ABC)主播戴维·缪尔对此并不赞同，并指出，特朗普已经执政三年多了。“当你成为总统后，做了什么来补充这些装备？”特朗普回答说:“我有很多事情要做。很多人拒绝让美国成功。”（海外网）
As complaints about dire shortages of protective gear for medical workers on the frontlines of the Covid-19 crisis began to stream in, President Donald Trump was quick to point the finger of blame at his predecessor, Barack Obama. ●predecessor 前任，前辈；原有事物，前身 My predecessor worked in this job for twelve years.我的前任做这份工作做了12年。
It was Obama and other administrations, he said, who left the shelves of the nation's Strategic National Stockpile bare of the items needed to combat the coronavirus. ●bare of 几乎没有，缺乏 The refrigerator is completely bare of food. 冰箱里完全没有食物。
To an extent, the President was right. The Obama administration did use and then failed to replace items from the stockpile to fight the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic.
But Trump hadn't replaced those items either, despite repeated warnings that the country was ill-prepared for a pandemic, stockpile experts said. ●ill-prepared 准备不足的；没准备好的
The President's criticism also ignored a key point: The stockpile was never intended -- or funded -- to be a panacea for a pandemic. Rather, it serves as one piece of the overall supply chain puzzle during a disaster. ●panacea （能解决一切问题的）万能之计，灵丹妙药 Technology is not a panacea for all our problems. 技术并非灵丹妙药，不能解决我们的一切问题。
The stockpile's inadequacies quickly came to light in the coronavirus pandemic -- a devastating health crisis that experts have long predicted. Trump delayed striking deals with the private sector and invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to produce more medical supplies, making a bad situation worse. And states -- bidding against one another and other countries for supplies at sharp markups -- turned to the quick relief of the stockpile, only to find it understocked and the federal stewards overseeing it in disarray. ●disarray 凌乱；混乱；杂乱 Ever since the oil crisis, the industry has been in (a state of) disarray. 自石油危机以来，该行业就一直处于混乱状态。 Her clothes were in disarray. 她的衣服凌乱不堪。
The picture was complicated even further when a whistleblower alleged this week that the system of deciding what to put in the stockpile had been corrupted by outside lobbyists and politically driven decision-making, rather than science. ●whistleblower 吹哨人 ●lobbyist (游说政府或议员的)说客
"People who somehow believed it was a bottomless pit filled with everything they can imagine were not paying attention," said Tara O'Toole, a physician and former Department of Homeland Security official who once chaired an advisory committee on the stockpile. ●physician 内科医生
If politicians were surprised to discover that, "then shame on them," she said. Asked about why his administration hadn't replenished the bare cupboards he complained about, Trump suggested in an interview aired Tuesday that he was too busy dealing with scandals—the President called them "hoaxes"—that have marred the first three years of his administration. ●hoax 恶作剧，骗局 The bomb threat turned out to be a hoax. 那次炸弹恐吓结果发现是场恶作剧。 He'd made a hoax call claiming to be the president. 他搞了个恶作剧，打电话自称是总统。
"Well, I'll be honest with you," Trump told ABC News Anchor David Muir. "I (had) a lot of things going on."
The federal government assured Illinois hundreds of thousands of N95 respirator masks were on the way, Illinois Deputy Gov. Christian Mitchell said. But when the trucks arrived, the masks turned out to be surgical masks -- insufficient protection for the health care workers treating patients with the devastating virus.
The difference in the masks is "the difference between life and death," for frontline health care workers, Mitchell said. "What we have gotten out of the Strategic National Stockpile has not been what we were promised or what we were owed."
Similar complaints popped up across the country. Some states questioned whether supplies were being distributed equitably. Others reported receiving supplies that had passed their expiration date, had deteriorated or were not properly maintained. ●deteriorate 恶化，变坏 She was taken into hospital last week when her condition suddenly deteriorated. 她是在上周病情突然恶化时被送进医院的。 The political situation in the region has deteriorated rapidly. 该地区的政治形势已急剧恶化。
When California received 170 ventilators from the federal stockpile that were not in working condition, it enlisted Bloom Energy, which normally produces clean energy fuel cells, to help refurbish the machines. ●refurbish 再装修；整修；把…翻新 The developers refurbished the house inside and out. 开发商把这座房子里外翻修一新。
"The only feedback we had was, 'These ventilators are not working,'" Bloom's chief operations officer Susan Brennan said.
The ventilators had never been used but they also hadn't been prepped and preventative maintenance had not been performed, Brennan said. Bloom's team replaced batteries, calibrated oxygen settings, tested air flows and turned the rehabbed ventilators around in about 24 hours.
There were also maintenance issues with the remaining supplies in the stockpile. The government held 10,000 ventilators in reserve in anticipation of a surge in the coronavirus, Trump said in April. But about 20% of those ventilators were not in shape to be deployed because of a lapse in the government contract to keep the machines maintained, a source familiar with the matter said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said, "All ventilators deployed from the SNS are in operating condition and maintained based on the original manufacturer's specifications outlined in the service manual."
The HHS inspector general announced last month it would conduct an audit of whether the stockpile was effectively managed during the coronavirus crisis.
"We've always reviewed aspects of the Department's planning and response to emergencies," a spokesperson for the inspector general said. "In this case, however, the ongoing public health crisis prompted this review."
'Under wraps'
Greg Burel likened his job as director of the Strategic National Stockpile to managing a Home Depot for disasters. He kept track of some $8 billion worth of supplies and oversaw an annual budget in the hundreds of millions.Despite his national security clearance ending with his retirement in January, a related non-disclosure agreement prevents him from saying much more about the secretive national stash he supervised for nearly 13-years.
He won't say precisely how many facilities there are -- that's classified -- or what exactly is in them -- also classified.
"We keep it pretty much under wraps. The reason we do that is so a determined enemy can't figure out how to do something bad to us," Burel explained. "If somebody knows what's in it, they can say, 'Well, if they can take care of the zombie apocalypse, but they can't take care of something else, well, we'll do the something else.'" ●under wraps 秘密的 They tried to keep the report under wraps.他们试图对该报告保密。
Still, bits and pieces of the stockpile's history can be gleaned from congressional testimony, government websites and obscure publications such as the Domestic Preparedness Journal, in which Burel wrote a three-part series on the SNS shortly before his retirement.
The stockpile was created in 1999 amid fears of a bioterrorism attack coinciding with the Y2K computer switch over. Dubbed the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile at the time, the idea was to establish and maintain a sufficient supply of medicine and medical equipment in strategic locations around the US to be able to quickly help state and local communities in the wake of an attack with agents such as anthrax, smallpox, plague or other pathogens. ●bioterrorism 生物恐怖主义
That Y2K attack never came. But the stockpile was tapped following another disaster soon thereafter: On September 11, 2001, planes delivering stockpile supplies to New York City were the only flights allowed in American skies other than military aircraft and Air Force One.
In the wake of 9/11, the stockpile was given its current name: Strategic National Stockpile. It was used again in the early 2000s in response to a series of anthrax attacks around the US and ultimately supplied with enough medication to treat up to 12 million people.
In the years since the SNS has been used in response to a variety of disasters, from outbreaks of Zika, Ebola and botulism to flooding and 10 major hurricanes, including Katrina, Sandy and Maria. ●hurricane（尤指西大西洋的）飓风 The state of Florida was hit by a hurricane that did serious damage. 佛罗里达州遭受了飓风袭击，损失严重。
The event most comparable to the Covid-19 crisis was in 2009, when the SNS was used to fortify the response to the H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic. In 2003, under the George W. Bush administration, Burel said it had begun stockpiling massive quantities of antiviral medication and supplies in anticipation of pandemic influenza. It marked the first departure from its original mission of preparing for a terrorist attack. ●fortify（尤指为防御而）加强，增强 The argument had fortified her resolve to prove she was right. 这番争论增强了她证明自己正确的决心。
When H1N1 hit, the stockpile unleashed its largest deployment ever -- millions of drugs, masks and other protective gear for health workers across all 50 states. Those supplies were never replenished, partly because Congress declined the Obama administration's repeated requests to increase funding.
Burel said the normally low-profile SNS has received more attention in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis than at any point in its history.
One problem with all that attention, he said, is that "everybody then infers that it was supposed to be the place to get anything and everything you need for any kind of health care event. But the reality is it was never designed for that. And it was never funded for that."
Enough supplies? 'Well, of course not'
It wasn't a secret that the US didn't have adequate supplies on hand to fight a pandemic. Experts had been telling politicians as much for years. The warnings continued into the Trump administration before the pandemic, which transferred management of the SNS away from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to another arm of HHS.
Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response who is now in charge of the stockpile, prioritized preparing for a bioterrorism attack over a naturally occurring pandemic, he said in a recent interview with the Washington Post.
Still, he warned a congressional panel in December that "supply chain issues are among the most significant challenges to preparing for an influenza pandemic as well as other infectious diseases."
Kadlec testified America depended on overseas production for everything from gloves to pharmaceuticals.
Blame game
"When I took this over, it was an empty box," the President said in a March briefing. "And I'm not just blaming President Obama. You go long before that."
During the H1N1 influenza pandemic, the stockpile distributed 12.5 million antiviral regiments, 19.6 million pieces of PPE and 85.1 million N95 masks, according to a 2016 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
The Obama administration didn't replace those supplies, nor did the Trump administration take the initiative to do so until it found itself in the midst of a global pandemic. The US needed 3.5 billion N95 respirator masks for a "severe event," HHS' Kadlec told the Senate in March. There were only 12 million in the stockpile, Azar said in February, along with another 5 million N95s he believed were past their expiration date.
It took weeks of politicians and health care workers openly begging for supplies before Trump flipped the switch on the DPA and launched public-private partnerships aimed at easing the shortages.
Months before the administration ramped up production, at least one major mask-maker was reaching out to the federal government warning that shortages were imminent. But Kadlec and others ignored the mask-maker's repeated offers to ramp up production, according to the whistleblower complaint filed by Dr. Rick Bright, a top HHS official and one of Kadlec's deputies. ●ramp sth up 加快（速度）；增加（威力）；提高（费用） Announcement of the merger is expected to ramp up share prices over the next few days.预计公司合并的消息发布后，接下来的几天里股票价格会上扬。 Mitsubishi has ramped up the speed of its new micro-controllers.三菱公司已经提高了其新生产的微控制器的运行速度。
When the administration finally struck production deals, it would take even longer for American manufacturers, who have shifted so much production overseas, to build out production capacity in the US.
When Moldex-Metric, the second-largest disposable respiratory mask-maker in the US, secured a major mask-making contract with HHS, it also began pursuing ways to add equipment and production lines.
"There's only so much capacity to make these in the United States. Most of the manufacturers here have their plants, and we can run them 24/7 and hit capacity," James Hornstein, general counsel for Moldex-Metric, said last month. After H1N1, "no one came to us and said we want you to ramp up your automated manufacturing lines, so you can make more when you turn on the switch."
The failure to keep American cupboards stocked with crucial medical supplies stretches back across administration and across party lines.
Public health and national security experts say politicians have consistently failed to treat public health issues, such as emerging infectious diseases, and the fragile supply chain surrounding them as a serious national security threat.
Pointing fingers over the stockpile "is the politicians diverting from the fact that they were basically negligent," O'Toole said. ●negligent 疏忽的，失职的 The judge said that the teacher had been negligent in allowing the children to swim in dangerous water. 法官说允许孩子们在危险水域游泳是教师的失职。
【相关词汇】
predecessor 前任，前辈；原有事物，前身 bare of 几乎没有，缺乏
ill-prepared 准备不足的；没准备好的
panacea （能解决一切问题的）万能之计，灵丹妙药
disarray 凌乱；混乱；杂乱
whistleblower 吹哨人 lobbyist (游说政府或议员的)说客
physician 内科医生
hoax 恶作剧，骗局
deteriorate 恶化，变坏
refurbish 再装修；整修；把…翻新
under wraps 秘密的
hurricane（尤指西大西洋的）飓风
fortify（尤指为防御而）加强，增强
ramp sth up 加快（速度）；增加（威力）；提高（费用）
negligent 疏忽的，失职的
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