White House Official (Now a Think Tanker) Had Warned Trump Admin. in 2019 of Devastating Pandemic

Here is more from the New York Times:

White House economists published a study last September that warned a pandemic disease could kill a half million Americans and devastate the economy.  It went unheeded inside the administration.

One of the authors of the study, who has since left the White House, now says it would make sense for the administration to effectively shut down most economic activity for two to eight months to slow the virus.

Outside economists have been pumping out analyses on the optimal length of a shutdown almost daily. One that has been shared with officials inside the White House comes from Anna Scherbina, an author of the 2019 study who is now an economist at Brandeis University and the American Enterprise Institute.

Anna Scherbina is a visiting scholar at AEI.  Here is her working paper on determining the optimal duration of the COVID-19 suppression policy.

Another AEI scholar, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who was Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the Trump Administration, has co-authored a new report on a national COVID-19 surveillance system.

Dr. Gottlieb has reportedly been talking with lawmakers about crafting legislation to put his surveillance system in place.

That paper was co-authored with Mark McClellan, another former FDA commissioner (under George W. Bush) who used to be a scholar at AEI as well as the Brookings Institution.

Here is a link to all of AEI's COVID-19 coverage, including its COVID-19 Action Tracker.

"Think Tank" Sowing Disinformation About Coronavirus

Here is more from the New York Times:

Chinese officials appeared to have relied on borrowing falsehoods pushed by anti-American organizations cultivated by the Kremlin that already have an audience in Western countries. Some of the sites have received Russian money, according to experts.

On March 12, for instance, Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, posted a link on Twitter to what he described as a “very much important” article that falsely described American origins of the coronavirus.

The article was from Global Research, a group based in Montreal that presents itself as a think tank but largely traffics in conspiracy theories, many of them pro-Russian and anti-American.

At least a dozen other Chinese Embassies around the world retweeted Mr. Zhao’s post. All told, more than 12,000 accounts have retweeted it and more than 20,000 users have liked it.

Here is more about the Global Research article from Politico:

On March 4, the People’s Daily reprint of this article was used as the basis for a piece published on conspiracy website GlobalResearch.ca, titled “China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?” It was the first of two articles on the website that would lead to Zhao’s tweet nine days later suggesting the U.S. Army had brought the virus to Wuhan.

Here is a link to Global Research, and here is a link to the above-mentioned article.

In related new, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS), unveiled a tool to track the Chinese disinformation campaign.  As NYT notes, the group's Hamilton dashboard has long monitored Russian Twitter accounts and broadcast feeds.

Why No Think Tanks Predicted the Coronavirus Pandemic

Here is a little tidbit from Neil Pyper in The National Interest:

A number of think tanks and consultancies provide early warning services about low-profile, high-impact events, such as conflict in the South China Sea. However, if they feature events that are considered far fetched, they risk losing credibility among their clients and readers.

Of course, after major events happen, think tanks readily jump on the short-term bandwagon and offer quick analysis that often lacks depth and breadth.