The Diva is Worried

I do not usually inject my personal views in this blog, but as a person who has spent more than 40 years in the field of emergency management – as a researcher, adjunct professor, consultant, practitioner – I am truly concerned about how President Trump is mismanaging the response to and slow recovery from COVID-19.

Much of my past work has involved sharing the experience and expertise of the U.S., sometimes with other countries. Presently, the U.S. is a dreadful model. I can only hope that things get corrected here in the near future.

These thoughts were triggered by reading this article in the WashPost: Directions on Safely Reopening the County Must Come from Credible Officials Not Trump.

Significant Analysis of the Defense Production Act

The Defense Production Act and the Failure to Prepare for Catastrophic Incidents.

“The executive branch’s ad-hoc application of the Defense Production Act’s authorities to this pandemic is Exhibit A of how our government, across multiple Republican and Democratic administrations and throughout the national security enterprise, has failed to develop or adapt the Act’s tools for the threats of the 21st century. This failure has occurred despite congressional attempts to improve realistic planning for using it in catastrophes.”

Trump’s Reopening Collides with Reality

From Politico: How Trump’s reopening plans could collide with reality. Consumer and business behavior is mostly out of the president’s ability to control. Some excerpts:

Trump can fire off tweets, attempt to bully states into lifting social restrictions and otherwise declare America open for business. But he can’t force companies to reopen or ramp up production until owners and executives believe their workers are ready.

He also can’t make consumers flock back to malls, bars, restaurants, sports arenas or other public areas until they feel comfortable they‘ll be safe from the coronavirus.

Reports on Reopening the Country- revised

The Diva located the AEI report early in the day, but by noontime she found mention of four plans. See below:

From the American Enterprise Institute: National coronavirus response: A road map to reopening. Lead author is Dr. Scott Gottlieb. Report is 20 pp.

From Vox: The 4 plans to end social distancing, explained. The plans all say the US needs more testing. But they differ on how much more.

Economic Decision Tool To Help Plan for Disasters – from NIST

From HSNewswire: Online Economic Decision Tool to Help Communities Plan for Disaster.

Preparing a community’s buildings and infrastructure for a hurricane or earthquake can be an incredibly complicated and costly endeavor. A new online tool from NIST could streamline this process and help decision makers invest in cost-effective measures to improve their community’s ability to mitigate, adapt to and recover from hazardous events.

COVID is the First “National” Disaster

 

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.”

Trump’s Leadership Failures So Far re COVID-19

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!