The Ghost of Pandemics Past

The nightmare that still haunts me...

I lived it. I was inside the Trump administration during the first term, working on national security and pandemic response as COVID-19 swept across the country. I saw firsthand how politics took precedence over public health, how expertise was sidelined, and how critical decisions were shaped by electoral considerations rather than the well-being of the American people. Now, in Trump’s second term, the same troubling patterns are emerging—only this time, they are deliberate, systematic, and more dangerous than before.

During COVID-19, Trump routinely dismissed the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and pressured health agencies to downplay the severity of the virus. I witnessed how the administration attempted to control messaging, sometimes rewriting guidance for political purposes. Public health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and Dr. Stephen Hahn, became targets of Trump’s attacks whenever their advice contradicted his political goals. Science was subjugated to ideology.