2019-10-15

A 63-page paper, "Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise Draft After-Action Report, October 2019," by DHHS Office of tthe Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response,  marked "For Official Use Only." was published by the NY Times on March 19, 2020. It reports on the results of a simulated response to an imagined influenza epidemic that, as it turns out, is quite similar to what is actually happening right now. From the 3/19/20 NYT article:

"...the planning and thinking happened many layers down in the bureaucracy. The knowledge and sense of urgency about the peril appear never to have gotten sufficient attention at the highest level of the executive branch or from Congress, leaving the nation with funding shortfalls, equipment shortages and disorganization within and among various branches and levels of government.

"The October 2019 report in particular documents that officials at the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, and even at the White House’s National Security Council, were aware of the potential for a respiratory virus outbreak originating in China to spread quickly to the United States and overwhelm the nation.

“'Nobody ever thought of numbers like this,' Mr. Trump said on Wednesday, at a news conference.

"In fact, they had."

Huffington Post article March 20, 2020: "Trump Administration Failed Dry Run ‘Crimson Contagion’ Pandemic Exercise"

See also December 4 testimony by Robert Kadlec about pandemics to a house subcommittee.

This administration has had 3 years to straighten out whatever was left "broken" by the previous administration. Taxpayers are paying the federal government to do these studies and ACT on the findings, fix what's not working. So many useful reports are ignored -- this website links to several other reports about US vulnerabilities for responding effectively to a pandemic produced during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, and even one produced in July 2017.

In addition to paying people to produce all these reports, we are currently paying government employees to coax the president, who won't read reports like this and announces his complete ignorance of their existence (who knew?), to face realities that have been anticipated, even expected. We have been let down.