From the
New York Times :
The
outbreak of the respiratory virus began in China and was quickly spread
around the world by air travelers, who ran high fevers. In the United
States, it was first detected in Chicago, and 47 days later, the World
Health Organization declared a pandemic. By then it was too late: 110
million Americans were expected to become ill, leading to 7.7 million
hospitalized and 586,000 dead.
That
scenario, code-named “Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza
pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration’s Department of
Health and Human Services in a series of exercises that ran from last
January to August.
The simulation’s sobering results —
contained in a draft report dated October 2019
that has not previously been reported — drove home just how
underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government
would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment
existed.
The draft report, marked “not to be
disclosed,” laid out in stark detail repeated cases of “confusion” in
the exercise. Federal agencies jockeyed over who was in charge. State
officials and hospitals struggled to figure out what kind of equipment
was stockpiled or available. Cities and states went their own ways on
school closings.
Many of the
potentially deadly consequences of a failure to address the shortcomings
are now playing out in all-too-real fashion across the country.
The movie Contagion is also eerily accurate. I'm glad to be in Australia and not the US.
ReplyDelete