Dr. Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College in Michigan, recently cited the late Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma while relating activities on the Hillsdale campus while it is shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.

First, he asked rhetorically why there was not enough testing kits when the pandemic arrived in the U.S., then gave an answer:

“I am told that our national stockpile of these things was depleted during the swine flu pandemic of 2009 and never built back up. I am told that there has been an unsuccessful push to produce a stockpile of ventilators going back to the end of the second Bush administration and extending through President Obama’s two terms, and that the FDA has delayed production recently by taking five years to approve a new ventilator design. There is no doubt that there are many people at fault, but above all the blame lies with the bureaucratic form of government that has developed in our country since the 1960s.

Later, he added these remarks:

In 2007, the late Senator Tom Coburn issued a well-documented report entitled, “CDC Off Center–A review of how an agency tasked with fighting and preventing disease has spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars for failed prevention efforts, international junkets, and lavish facilities, but cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.”

In the years since, there have been reports documenting multi-million dollar CDC studies on topics like the prevention of gun violence, how parents should discipline children, and chronic health conditions among lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations.

“In 2017 alone, the CDC spent over $1.1 billion on chronic disease prevention and health promotion, $215 million on environmental health, and $285 million on injury prevention–all purposes that are addressed by other federal agencies. That money could have been used to prepare for communicable diseases, including replenishment of our stockpile of masks and ventilators. In other words, it could have been used to do the work the CDC was created to do.”

He related the history of the CDC as follows:

The CDC was created in 1942 as the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities, and in 1946 was renamed the Communicable Disease Center. For many decades it focused its full efforts on its original mission: viruses and communicable diseases. But by the 2000s, the CDC, like most executive agencies, had become largely independent of political control and lost its focus. It had widened its work to include chronic diseases and addictions, nutrition, school health, injuries, and–a telltale sign of ideological corruption and mission creep–racial and ethnic approaches to community health. It is a logical fact that if you favor some people you must disfavor others.”

He criticized the duplicity of the Chinese government for failing to take the necessary steps to prevent the spread of the disease.

He also cited the example of how the now famous Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the NIH, did not understand the risks of the virus as late as Jan. 26. During a radio interview with host John Catsimatidis, he said that the American public shouldn’t worry about the coronavirus outbreak in China. “It’s a very, very low risk to the United States,” Fauci said.

Doctor Arnn also made this telling point:

One needed response to the pandemic is already taking shape with the introduction of legislation by Sen. Tom Cotton and others to return pharmaceutical manufacturing to the United States. How many of us realized before this crisis the extent of our dependence on China for medical drugs and supplies? How many knew that China produces around 40 percent of the total world supply of “active pharmaceutical ingredients,” including 97 percent of the U.S. market for antibiotics? Or that it produces 50 percent of the world’s surgical masks?

(Coburn has been on this page for several weeks in a row. Arnn’s comments are just another example of how farsighted this great Amereican was. Perhaps some of his proposals, which have been borne out, will be followed after his death.)

Arrn concluded his essay this way:

The sacrifices that are demanded of Americans today may be necessary, but they must never become customary. The purpose of our government is to keep us alive, yes, but also to keep us living and working, as is our right.

Going forward, our best leaders will eschew political gamesmanship and work to control our borders, fix our public health agencies, and end our dependence on China and other foreign countries for goods that are essential to our national health and security. We must prepare ourselves to face the next pandemic without surrendering our way of life.