For three Texas A&M University pandemic scholars, the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s ill-prepared response wasn’t a surprise. In fact, they predicted it and warned U.S. officials years ago.

Christine Blackburn, Andrew Natsios and Gerald Parker wrote an article in 2018, emphasizing the country’s need to prepare and to unite fronts with other countries and organizations to fight off a looming pandemic.

“It is not a matter of if, but when, the next disease will sweep through the world with deadly and costly consequences,” they wrote.

The article, “Three reasons the U.S. is not ready for the next pandemic,” was published in The Conversation, an online academic journal. It outlined the country’s gaps and risks in preparation for a pandemic, called for a strong, centralized leadership for international cooperation in health, and for U.S. officials to tackle the country’s vulnerable manufacturing chain of medical supplies.

The article noted that although global supply chains are beneficial in the way they offer cost effective, fast and efficient delivery of equipment and supplies, relying on these deliveries in other countries could leave chains vulnerable and “deprive people of needed medical supplies” in the case of an emergency or epidemic. The article even mentioned a potential shortage of N95 medical grade masks if an epidemic were to hit Asia, where most of the United States’ masks are produced.

More Information Tune in Gerald Parker and Christine Blackburn, director and deputy director of the Pandemic and Biosecurity Policy Program at Texas A&M University, are set to appear on Texas A&M System’s new TV show “COVID-19: The Texas A&M System Responds” Thursday at 7 p.m. The show airs on KAMU-TV in College Station and on the system’s YouTube channel.

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“This interconnectedness of the global economy and the expansiveness of medical supply chains means that a disruption anywhere along the line could spell disaster worldwide,” the article authors wrote.

A&M researchers also urged U.S. officials to “address the threat of pandemics in cooperation with all other nations and with multilateral institutions such as the World Health Organization, the U.N. Security Council, UNICEF and more.” And it proposed the creation of a position within the White House that would have quick “decision-making authority” and prioritize pandemics as a threat to national security.

“When you’re talking about pandemic, it’s a collective good. We’re always in this together. Diseases don’t respect borders. … In order to address that, we need to address it as a global community,” said Blackburn, lead author of the article and deputy director of Texas A&M’s pandemic and biosecurity policy program.

With an onset of the novel coroanvirus, many of the issues or predictions presented in the A&M researchers’ article have become a reality.

Countries around the world, including the United States, are responding to a shortage of medical-grade masks — an issue that researchers suggested could have been prevented with the creation of policies to diversify production and transportation of supplies and a better understanding of critical supply chains and points of possible breakdown.

Suggested collaboration with health institutions, including the World Health Organization, is also in jeopardy.

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President Donald Trump announced this week that he was instructing his administration to halt funding for the WHO, an agency responsible for international public health, pending a review of its role “in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.” The United States is WHO’s largest single donor, contributing between $400 million and $500 million annually to the Geneva-based agency in recent years.

WHO officials said they alerted the world about the virus in the early weeks of January.

Trump’s latest move has garnered criticism from global leaders and health officials, including Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, and Trump’s recent comments on the virus have often been at odds with state officials and officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Blackburn said it will take several years to move production of masks to a point where the United States is less dependent on other countries like China for production. Agricultural sectors and its workers, as well as the food supply chain, which Blackburn has been analyzing the past several weeks, will likely be impacted, resulting in lower supply or higher price points for certain foods.

“I think we really need to understand that this is a long-term thing that we’re going to be dealing with,” she said. “A vaccine is quite a way off and there’s some hurdles that we need to overcome to create a vaccine and make sure that its stays effective.”

Life as we know it has changed, she said. Now is the time to start planning and asking ourselves: “How do we move forward in the absence of something like a vaccine?”

Blackburn and her colleague Parker, the deputy director of A&M’s pandemic and biosecurity policy program, will appear on Texas A&M University System’s TV show “COVID-19: The Texas A&M System Responds” Thursday to further discuss the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

brittany.britto@chron.com