To the Editor:

Years ago, I remember how my young kids or one of their friends would run in from playing and go on convincingly about how someone cheated at a game, shoved somebody or wasn’t being fair. On many occasions I would have to say, “Jeez, that sounds like only half of the story!”

Well, when I read the Enterprise editorial of March 26, 2020, I had that same feeling [“Bitter truth is better medicine than sugar-coated placebos”].

The team meant to deal with pandemics was not dismantled two years ago. With respect to that editorial, I remember Tim Morrison (former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council) talking recently about how most of the top people are still working there in the biodefense office under the National Security Council. A quick search of NSC staff bears that out [Tim Morrison, Washington Post, March 16, 2020, “No the White House didn't dissolve its Pandemic Response Office. I was there.”].

Also of note, when President Trump instituted a travel ban in early February on flights to and from China, he was called a xenophobe and a racist.

As a subscriber, I for one read the Enterprise editorial weekly as it has great potential to shape public opinion. There are probably a lot of people who would take comfort in knowing that the office meant to deal with pandemics is alive and well.

With regard to the serious COVID-19 pandemic, it is important for readers to feel like they can rely on newspapers like The Enterprise for fair accurate information. Incomplete or false information is divisive and dangerous especially as we figure out how to deal with this COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, kudos to the Enterprise staff for excellent weekly coverage of our local and regional news and events!

Michael Bashant

Voorheesville

Editor’s note: We agree accurate information is important. While our editorials express the newspaper’s opinion, they are based on fact. The March 6 editorial says this, urging people to look forward for solutions, not behind them for recrimination: “It is too late, in our country, to wish the team meant to deal with pandemics wasn’t dismantled two years ago. It’s too late to wish our federal government saw what was happening in December when the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, and went to work producing test kits or getting factories to produce needed ventilators and protective gear.”

Here is what Snopes, the fact-checking website reports on the pandemic team being dismantled two years ago: “In spring 2018, White House officials tasked with directing a national response to a pandemic were ousted. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior. It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.”

Tim Morrison himself, in the opinion piece you cite, says: “It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff.”

— Melissa Hale-Spencer, editor