From Bloomberg: U.S. Disaster Response Isn’t Ready for Actual National Disaster. The country’s disaster preparedness plan did not anticipate a nationwide event, the chief of an aid group says. An excerpt:

We’re all learning what these managers say they’ve known for a long time: Even though the U.S. has a national emergency agency, it is not really designed to handle an emergency that is national in scope. FEMA is designed to handle, at most, a few state-by-state disasters at a time. In fact, the system explicitly counts on having the ability to move resources from one state to another as needed.

“None of us, and by ‘us’ I mean FEMA, the Red Cross, or anyone” anticipated an event overtaking the whole country at once, says Greg Forrester, president and chief executive officer of the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (Nvoad), one of the many non-governmental organizations that FEMA relies on for backup. “And none of us has the resources to sustain a response like this.”

He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus. An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.

From the NY Times, this indepth article detailing the actions and inactions of Pres. Trump so far this year. This should be helpful to anyone working on a case study of this crisis.  The article is especially notable in that the byline lists 6 authors!

From the Wash Post on April 11: A plan to defeat coronavirus finally emerges, but it’s not from the White House. In the absence of federal direction, states and America’s top experts forge the path ahead.

From Politico: Trump Broke the Agencies That Were Supposed To Stop the Covid-19 Epidemic. The government agencies designed to protect us are riddled with vacancies and temporary officials. No wonder we’re facing a catastrophe. An excerpt:

Trump is obviously not responsible for the appearance of the novel coronavirus—but he is responsible for the government’s spiraling failure to respond appropriately in a timely manner. He has ignored the hiring practices, protocols, norms and expertise that would have given him and the federal government a better shot at defeating Covid-19. Three years into his administration and with a Republican-controlled Senate ready to move nominees through to confirmation, he didn’t build the national leadership we needed. That inescapable fact is Donald Trump’s fault.

The “next 9/11” is happening right now because Trump ignored the lessons of the last one.