Rahm Emanuel makes some suggestions that are worthy of consideration in his Wall Street Journal opinion piece,  "How to Prepare for the Next Pandemic” (April 13).

However, not only does he use the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to make political attacks as we would expect of him, I had to read no further than the first of his four initiatives to find him using lies to achieve his objective of praising President Obama and disparaging President Trump:

“Early-warn­ing sys­tem. ...Maybe more egre­gious, he [Trump] aban­doned an Obama-era pro­gram that had de­ployed pub­lic-health ex­perts to keep watch over de­vel­op­ments across the globe—in­clud­ing in Wuhan. The U.S. needs to re­con­sti­tute and ex­pand that net­work.”

Is it really true that President Trump aban­doned an Obama-era pro­gram that had de­ployed pub­lic-health ex­perts to keep watch over de­vel­op­ments across the globe?  The CDC web site has information on its activities in global disease detection, including the following paragraph:

“A central focus of our program is the establishment and expansion of GDD Centers, particularly in low-resource areas. Six of our ten GDD centers are located in partner countries for the Global Health Security Agenda. CDC operates GDD Centers in: 1) Bangladesh, 2) Central America (Guatemala), 3) Central Asia (Kazakhstan), 4) China, 5) Egypt, 6) India, 7) Kenya, 8) South Africa, 9) the South Caucasus (Georgia), and 10) Thailand.”

Furthermore, as spelled out clearly in the Global Disease Detection Operations Center Fact Sheet, what Emanuel describes as “an Obama-era program” was actually established in 2007 under President Bush.

It seems to me that the WSJ opinion page editors should do a better job vetting supposed facts in the opinion pieces it chooses to publish, especially when it comes from a political hack under the guise of making constructive public health recommendations.