Pandemic Defense Should be Part of the Annual Defense Budget From Now On

In 2015, Bill Gates said "The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola…If anything kills 10 Million people over the next few decades, it will probably be a highly contagious virus. Not missiles, but microbes"

If we had been spending 5% of the military budget on pandemic defense for the last 5 years since that warning, we would be $150 Billion more prepared than we are now.

We could have the stockpiles of critical medical equipment and supplies. We could have been ready to fight a "medium" level pandemic rather than just a "mild" one and would have the respirators, personal protective equipment, face masks, ICU beds, and test kits, or would have been much better at mobilizing them if more needed to be made. Let's have excess manufacturing and test lab capacity waiting on standby for emergencies like this.

I realize having supplies and industrial capacity on standby is not "efficient" or "lean", but neither is having 18 aircraft carrier groups and stockpiles of ammunition and rockets and missiles. Sometimes the threats are so real that its worth investing in being prepared on a moments notice to be able to respond to emergencies. Imagine if we could have had hundreds of thousands of test kits out to people during the first week or two of this crisis? Imagine if running out of facemakes, protective gloves and suits, ICU beds and respirators was NOT a real concern.

We have a national petroleum reserve, so lets have a national pandemic defense supply reserve.

Australia has already built non-profit government owned laboratories and facilities designed to mass produce test kits, treatment medicines, and vaccines on a moments notice. Why is the Greatest Country on the planet not able to do that?

We need emergency communication channels in place in case a research lab uncovers something but they don't have permission for clinical work with humans (which really happened early in this crisis).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqw-9yMV0sI