ANCHORAGE -- From the moment Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, was made aware of the threat of COVID-19, he acted faster than most other states and the federal government. In an interview, I asked him why he moved so quickly when others did not?

"We got a call from the (U.S.) State Department in January asking for assistance with a charter (plane) that was coming out of Wuhan with State Department officials. We are the entry point for North America from Asia. ... If you are going to evacuate U.S. State Department officials and their families from China because of the virus, there is something to it. We immediately set up our disaster team ... and we started to prepare at that point for some type of epidemic or pandemic."

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Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ new book “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States” (HarperCollins/Zondervan).

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