Fact check: Obama’s administration made a pandemic “playbook” due to the H1N1 outbreak, which Trump’s following administration grossly ignored during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Summary of the results

1. Summary of the results

The Obama administration did create a 69-page pandemic playbook in 2016 titled "Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents." The Trump administration was briefed on its existence in 2017, and while they acknowledged the document, they officially deemed it "dated" and "insufficient" for their needs.

2. Missing context/alternative viewpoints

The original statement omits several crucial pieces of context:

• The Trump administration conducted their own pandemic preparedness exercise called "Crimson Contagion" in 2019, showing they weren't completely ignoring pandemic preparation
• The playbook was never formally approved as Trump administration strategy, making the term "ignored" potentially misleading
• Multiple Obama administration officials, including Ronald Klain and Nicole Lurie, were actively involved in transition briefings and tabletop exercises with the incoming Trump team
• The Trump administration's criticism of the playbook being "dated" and "insufficient" represents their official position on why they didn't follow it, rather than simple ignorance

3. Potential misinformation/bias in the original statement

The statement shows partisan bias in several ways:

• The use of the word "grossly ignored" is emotionally charged and oversimplifies a more complex situation
• It fails to acknowledge that the Trump administration had their own pandemic preparation strategies
• The statement implies a direct cause-and-effect relationship between not using the Obama playbook and COVID-19 response failures, without considering other factors
• Both Democratic and Republican administrations would benefit from their preferred narrative: Democrats from showing Trump as incompetent, Republicans from showing Obama's plans as inadequate