Joe Biden\u2019s presidential campaign criticized Donald Trump on Tuesday for saying that, if elected, he would close an office in the White House tasked with making sure the country is better prepared for the next pandemic.<\/p>\n
In an interview with TIME published Tuesday, Trump said he would disband the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR), which opened last summer after Congress approved a bill in 2022 with bipartisan support to mandate its creation. The office most recently responded to an outbreak of bird flu in dairy farms, coordinating with the Food and Drug Administration to ensure milk remains safe to drink, and working with farmers to contain the virus.<\/p>\n
Trump described the office to TIME as \u201ca way of giving out pork\u201d and said an effective pandemic response could be mobilized once a virus emerges. \u201cI think it sounds good politically, but I think it\u2019s a very expensive solution to something that won\u2019t work. You have to move quickly when you see it happening,\u201d Trump told TIME. <\/p>\n
The Biden campaign compared Trump\u2019s comments to his haphazard response to the COVID-19 pandemic during his last year in office, when he claimed the virus would disappear \u201clike a miracle\u201d and would \u201cgo away without a vaccine\u201d and suggested during a White House press briefing that the virus could be cured by injecting patients with bleach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Biden\u2019s presidential campaign criticized Donald Trump on Tuesday for saying that, if elected, he would close an office in the White House tasked with making sure the country is better prepared for the next pandemic.<\/p>\n
In an interview with TIME published Tuesday, Trump said he would disband the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR), which opened last summer after Congress approved a bill in 2022 with bipartisan support to mandate its creation. The office most recently responded to an outbreak of bird flu in dairy farms, coordinating with the Food and Drug Administration to ensure milk remains safe to drink, and working with farmers to contain the virus.<\/p>\n