Ebola, the CDC and why government struggles with unprecedented disasters. One key element of the explanation:
A main culprit of government fecklessness, Light wrote, is communication. This is in part “because information has to flow up through multiple layers to reach the top of an agency, while guidance must flow down through the same over-layered chain. The result is a disastrous version of the childhood game of ‘gossip’ in which key information gets lost, discarded, distorted, or ignored as it is passed from one child to another.”
Recovery Diva 
Thanks for writing.
“In retrospect, we could have responded faster,” WHO official Richard Brennan told The Washington Post earlier this month. “Some of the criticism is a IMHO.
appropriate.” Yet, he said, “I think we also have to get things in perspective that this outbreak has a dynamic that’s unlike everything we’ve ever seen before and, I think, has caught everyone unawares.”
How many times has some version of “the dog ate my homework” been replayed? The “unthinkable” card played once again, no?
Has the community lost faith in leadership of agencies supposed to be taking care of public safety? Is this destabilizing? Ebola has been around awhile, it IS NOT an unthinkable situation, it is not unconventional, and yet, it has led to an “unconventional crisis” using Dr.Erwan Lagadec’s guidelines/definitions.
There’s a damn good reason ship captains have always gone down with their ships – total responsibility AND accountability. Don’t take on the job if you can’t do the deed. There is no “unthinkable” get out of jail card.
That said, you can learn to “use what you already know to go beyond what you currently think.” That is the factor of readiness for the shovel to the back of the head.
Article well worth reading