From the staff of Vox: The legacy of the pandemic: 11 ways it will change the way we live. Few aspects of life are untouched by coronavirus and resulting global lockdowns. From an emerging “quarantine state of mind” to a new era of frugality to expanding how we vote, here’s what next.
From Newsroom.com.nz; Long read: NZ wasn’t ready for a pandemic . Analysis: New Zealand scored just 54 out of 100 on an international assessment of pandemic preparedness in October. Marc Daalder investigates how we’ve nonetheless managed to weather the storm so far.
Thanks to Ian McLean of NZ for this citation.
From the Wall St. Journal: The Secret Group of Scientists and Billionaires Pushing a Manhattan Project for Covid-19. They are working to cull the world’s most promising research on the pandemic, passing on their findings to policy makers and the White House.
The WSJ has made the full text of this article available to non-subscribers. This must be a WSJ scoop since I have not seen any other mention of this group in the media.
From Politico, this article re the fumbling and stumbling in relief and recovery efforts:
Backlash grows as pandemic relief stumbles. And lawmakers are getting anxious as problems crop up in the recovery effort.
Update: Federal watchdogs name top staffer to oversee pandemic response. The committee tapped Robert Westbrooks, a veteran inspector general, as the committee’s executive director.
Let’s hope the new watchdog can succeed in improving response and recovery.
From the HuffPost: America Is Not Set Up For This. Experts have been predicting a global flu pandemic for years. So why was the U.S. so unprepared for coronavirus?
For more on the topic of the vulnerabilities of the national emergency management systems, see the recent book by Rubin and Cutter noted here a few months ago. It was reviewed here by Don Watson in January.
From HSDL, this article about work at Harvard University: Ethics of COVID-19 Response and the Way Forward
The Harvard unit is new to me, but there definitely are a number of important ethical issues that should be explored.
Coronavirus Emergency Management Best Practices.
The FEMA Coronavirus Emergency Management Best Practices page contains resources for all levels of government, private sector, academic institutions, professional associations, and other organizations responding to the pandemic
From HSToday: COVID-19 Pandemic Plus the Big One: Preparing for a Disaster Double-Punch. An exceprt:
Let’s end on a positive note, which we adamantly believe. We’ll eventually get through whatever this pandemic, Mother Nature, or anything else throws at us next. Not because we have no choice. But because we can. And because we always have.
But let’s be primed to go big, go fast, and be nimble. Because we kept planning.
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.”
Recovery Diva 