The Obama administration dispatched high-level officials from several agencies Monday to allay concerns about swine flu and to demonstrate that it was fully prepared to confront the outbreak even as the president said there was “not a cause for alarm.”
Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, and Dr. Richard E. Besser, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the administration was prepared to respond to any further spread of the swine flu virus.
Homeland security officials said they expected the outbreak to spread.
“We are proceeding as if we are preparatory to a full pandemic level,” Ms. Napolitano said.
As the administration responds to its first domestic emergency, it is building on concrete preparations made during the tenure of President George W. Bush that have won praise from public health experts.
But its actions are also informed by what Mr. Bush learned in his response to Hurricane Katrina: that political management of a crisis, and of public expectations, can be as important as the immediate response.
In a speech at the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, Mr. Obama said only a few words about swine flu. “This is, obviously, a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert,” he said. “But it’s not a cause for alarm.”
But behind the scenes at the White House, aides said the president was directing his administration to be ready in case an alarm needed to be sounded. A full report on the swine flu was added to Mr. Obama’s daily intelligence briefing, with updates given to him throughout the day.
The report isn't coming as a total shock to Obama. As I noted in a post on January 4, 2008, he was calling in the summer of 2005 for a drug stockpile against an avian flu pandemic, when he was a very junior Senator.
