General comment regarding the many expressed concerns regarding why our federal government did not do more, sooner:
As a nation, we were in a very vulnerable position coming in to this pandemic.
We had very low stockpiles of PPE, particularly the critical N95 (and similar) masks. We have some, but comparatively quite low capacity to produce these domestically. Same with ventilators. Same with a variety of pharmaceuticals.
We also have a very open, social, and personal-freedom-loving society. And we have not been directly affected by major, fast-moving infectious disease epidemics in a couple of generations. SARS, MERS, H1N1 were all fairly widespread global health crises that had (relatively) minimal impact here, so they did not have a major impact in social behavior like they did elsewhere.
Despite all the noise and partisan bluster (sometimes loud, obnoxious, largely unhelpful and from both major parties), and all of the hindsight second-guessing, consider for a moment what the US (including federal, state, and local government, businesses, and NGO respones) HAS done in response to this pandemic:
- State of Emergency at federal level and all 50 states (and, I believe, all protectorates, territories, etc)
- National Guard and other military assets deployed to the tune of tens of thousands
- Nearly all people (300+ million) across the country in some sort of a lockdown
- Nearly all schools and universities classrooms closed
- Nearly all professional and amatuer sports stopped
- Nearly all churches, and other houses of faith/worship closed
- Most international borders nearly closed (including air traffic)
- 4,000,000 tests (and ramping daily) administered and analyized
- Managed ICU caseloads in some hotspots up to 10x their normal levels
- Kept the country fed
- Kept all critical infrastructure up and running (electric, gas, water, sewer, telco, Internet)
- All was done with, at least, some thoughtfulness about the Constitution: states rights, civil rights, etc
Etc, etc, etc. And all with essentially zero civil unrest. Think about all of that. Now clear your mind and return to December 1, 2019. How would your 12/1/19 self react to the above changes?
It is myopic and naive to think that all of this has been done accidentally and without a lot of planning and foresight - particularly when it comes to managing ALL of us through the psychological change curve.
US intelligence agencies and disaster planning agencies have long known the risks of this type of pandemic. They have known the risks have been rising with increasing global population and air travel. They have been building and revising plans around this type of situation for many years. And they did warn the government, and their warnings were included in briefings to the NSC, to the president. And also to the intelligence committees in the House and the Senate. And plans have been executed. Certainly they have been adjusted on the fly as new information was learned and unanticipated problems arose, etc.
Has our government made mistakes? Absolutely. Could more lives have been saved if plans were better, if execution was better, if grandstanding politicians (of both parties) had not done what politicians do? Of course.
But, given how unprepared we were coming into this, let's all consider that work WAS done by thousands of professionals to get us started on minimizing the death and destruction from this pandemic. And, now that millions of professionals ARE working on every imaginable aspect of this pandemic, we will continue to work our way through this.
