![]() ![]() The COVID-19 outbreak played out just as those plans and simulations warned, and as predicted it threatened to overwhelm hospitals and intensive care units because there was no vaccine or proven treatments for the novel disease. A dry run exercise last year called "Crimson Contagion" reached a similar conclusion. The federal, state and local governments all have emergency response plans, some of them evolving over years and revised after pandemics such as the 2003 SARS and 2012 MERS outbreaks (two previous coronaviruses) and the sporadic eruptions of the Ebola virus in Africa.Ī 2005 Health and Human Services Pandemic Influenza Plan warned that the government should expect a virus to spread rapidly worldwide, passed along even by people who are asymptomatic near-simultaneous outbreaks across states and local jurisdictions “enormous demands on the healthcare system,” with delays in developing and distributing a vaccine and antiviral drugs and disruptions of commerce and transportation systems. One fundamental problem is that, as good as the government can be at making plans for crises like the one we're in today, it does a poor job of following them. And even as this disease continues to spread and kill, we would be well-served to understand where the nation fell short so we can better prepare for the inevitable next one. Part of the fault certainly lies with Trump himself, whose initial dismissive attitude cost crucial weeks that should have been spent girding for the outbreak.īut even the fastest-responding chief executive would have been hampered by what experts have been warning for years is a dangerous lack of local, national and global preparedness for a pandemic of this scope. ![]() ![]() President Trump’s self-aggrandizing claims notwithstanding, the federal government’s response to the early warnings of the COVID-19 pandemic was slow and inadequate. ![]()
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