Maybe you know about this topic than I, so I shall just ask: "Did the USA have warehouses of necessary medical supplies before the pandemic struck?"

One Medium contributor says "yes" and the Trump administration sold them off. I'm finding that a little hard to believe. But you might know.

The western world got caught unprepared. In Canada, we had no warehouses. Only the province of Alberta made some right moves in January and bought a whole bunch of supplies and for a reasonable price. Had all jurisdictions done the same, the shortage would have happened a little earlier, that's all.

With the western world being so unprepared, we gave the decision to the group that were effected the most from this unpreparedness: the medical profession. It wanted an economic lockdown for to not overwhelm the medical system. It got its way, leaving the economists and sociologists out of the decision.

One thing you did not mention is any hint of an economic plan if a pandemic hits. In Canada, our prime minister and his staff concocted emergency social programs on the fly. In what normally takes several months of parliamentary process, the staff created these programs in a few days. This is not usual democratic due process.

Now we Canadians (and many other western nations) have a vastly increased money supply, which will have its own impact.

What should have been done is have many warehouses of rubber gloves, masks, and ventilators. As well, there should have been an economic plan to enact social programs. These plans should have had lots of analysis before the pandemic. The political leaders need only have pulled these plans off the shelf.

Canada had a much more reasoned response to Covid-19 than the United States. It also helped that the federal and provincial provinces seemed to work well together. While our per-capita Covid-19 rates are better than the USA's, they are not vastly better better.

This leads me to believe that the Obama plan would not have been vastly superior to whatever Mr. Trump did.