pkt,
Reps on your posts. They are right on. In fairness - for lack of a better description - posters have their opinions and just may be on issues they are not aware of. The Governors of the states did act quickly and appropriately working with their communities as the pandemic spread. They got none of the expected support from the federal government.
There certainly was a playbook called the
Pandemic Preparedness and Response Act passed in 2006, obligated the Executive Branch to set up Preparedness plans for appropriate agencies to be run by the
Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health. Here's the
CDC's as part of HHS. After the H1N1 Influenza pandemic, the
Government Accounting Office reviewed how it functioned as Congress intended. A quote from the beginning of their review:
The 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic was the first human pandemic in over four decades, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that there were as many as 89 million U.S. cases. Over $6 billion was available for the response, led by the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Homeland Security (DHS), with coordination provided by the Homeland Security Council (HSC) through its National Security Staff (NSS). In particular, HHS's CDC worked with states and localities to communicate with the public and to distribute H1N1 vaccine and supplies. GAO was asked (1) how HHS used the funding, (2) the key issues raised by the federal response, and (3) the actions taken to identify and incorporate lessons learned. GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from five states about their interaction with the federal government. GAO also reviewed documents and interviewed officials from HHS, DHS, the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), NSS, and others, such as associations.
The link also has Recommendations and is 67 pages long. The CDC's is 233 pages long. The DoD's is 87 pages long. Each state was required to set up their own pandemic preparedness plan.
The Defense Department established their Preparedness plan as part of the Act as did Homeland Security, DHS (links above) and each state.
When it was quite apparent there was human-to-human transmission in January, we should have followed the Plan, shutdown in early Feb hard to flatten the curve earlier with less impact on the economy. We had acting heads of DHS and DHH and those long-time deputy assistants with experience and knowledge of our pandemic response plans and how they functioned in 2009 were fired and not replaced.
The Defense Department has followed their plan (but for having to have our most experienced aircraft carrier commander fired for speaking out). Testing on board to see who was positive. Isolating those who were negative for two weeks. Quarantining those who were positive. Retesting all and moving those who were negative and turned positive to quarantine. The Defense Department has lengthened the time those positive cases are quarantined from two weeks to three weeks. They have canceled all overseas travel by personnel as well as imposing the mitigation measures drawn up in their Pandemic Preparedness Response plan and based on long-held public health measures that date back into the 1800s.
To say the least, Congress was pissed, called the appropriate heads of the Agencies who should have implemented the Pandemic Response Plan according to their bipartisan Act. Those acting heads of those Departments were totally unfamiliar with the actions expected to be taken under the law.
Not picking on anyone, but just to make it very clear, "nobody could see this coming, there's no playbook for this" (in italics) and noted as the Rand Paul school of disease control (love the title) is something we can all agree on is false and that there are specific and detailed responses, which as an example the Defense Department followed on CDC prepardedness plans.
YJ, I believe, and perhaps others may have also provided links to these plans earlier.
