What lessons learned can be determined from how the Federal government has responded in protecting the nation from the coronavirus pandemic?

MSgt Neil Greenfield — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 14:12:01 -0400

Blaming the current pandemic on previous administrations is nothing more than passing the buck. The USA currently leads all other nations in the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus. That does not give any confidence in our ability to counter this threat and looking at conspiracies is a blame game.
For up to date statistics on where the USA stands, see the link:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

COVID-19 Map

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

Response by MAJ Ken Landgren made Apr 12 at 2020 3:00 PM

MAJ Ken Landgren — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 15:00:50 -0400

Here are my AAR comments:
- We should have never dismantled the pandemic team in the NSC. There role was to assess the risk, make quick adjustments to support states and hospitals, and communicate medical procedures.
- It appears various people and federal agencies communicated the threat, but Trump and his administration did not heed the warnings until it was too late. COVID-19 was the country and growing. There was no top to bottom down push to prepare for the pandemic for a few weeks.
-There was no unified response. DHS is supposed to be the unified command element for the national response, but they were AWOL.
-Some folks in the administration bitch about states wanting support.
-During the onset of the US pandemic, the strategic message was it will disappear, we have control, and its just a flu.
-We started planning during the pandemic. We should have started before it hit the US.

Response by MAJ Byron Oyler made Apr 12 at 2020 5:06 PM

MAJ Byron Oyler — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 17:06:15 -0400

We probably lead the world in number of confirmed cases because people feel entitled to their test. Testing negative today does not mean you will not get it later and testing positive with no symptoms gives us nothing to treat but it does raise the cases for people to blame.

There is nothing to learn here except for people to understand people do not want to pay for something they may never need and when the shit hits the fan, they want to blame someone else for their lack of desire in the first place to pay for it. I was just reading Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and at the start of WWI, the British had a national scandal because they did not have enough munitions, the French were hit in a similar scandal for not having enough munitions and boots. How many lives could have been saved in the Philippines in 1942 if we had a standing army to send re-enforcements? We took a 15 million person military in 1945 to one million in 1946, how many lives did we lose not being prepared in 1950 when the North Koreans came South? Same stories, same complaints over 100 years ago as today and a large majority of people today would not have wanted 40,000 ventilators and 20,000 nurses sitting around being paid doing nothing. How would you like it if we said we were going to raise your taxes by $1500 to pay for a ventilator you may never need?

The Defense Health Agency wants to cut 18,000 medical staff from the military and when it passed, people were fine with it. The last 60 days might change that but for how long? People can blame Trump, Obama, Truman, or even Roosevelt but will this lack of preparedness ever really change? I have been in healthcare long enough to remember when many of our supplies were tossed by how it looked, not by an expiration date. Wanna know why I think the expiration dates came about for many supplies? They came about because of $$$. Does a bandaid or kerlex in an unopened package need to be replaced in five years? Not if it looks good and is used to cover a dirty wound but we now do that. Folks simply need to grasp today that in three months most will not care how many ventilators are available for the next pandemic because they do not need them now. If people want real change to preparedness, they need to be willing to pay the $$$.

Response by MSG Stan Hutchison made Apr 12 at 2020 5:10 PM

MSG Stan Hutchison — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 17:10:32 -0400

Lessons learned?
We as a nation cannot fight this pandemic effectively without leadership at the federal level. We have not had that.

Response by MAJ Ken Landgren made Apr 12 at 2020 9:09 PM

MAJ Ken Landgren — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 21:09:15 -0400

I think people are having a hard time conceptualizing the big picture. The POTUS is overall leader who should give strategic guidance. According to the National Response Framework, DHS is supposed to provide the unified command of the Task Force. The Task Force is comprised of possibly all branches of the Military, Army North, NORTHCOM, DOD, States, Federal Cabinets and Agencies, Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, NGOs, NG, Red Cross, CDC, HHS, and a few more.

Imagine a Corps Commander who wants to execute a Corps Level mission. He will talk to his staff and Division Commanders. Once all the wrinkles are taken out, a Corps Level OPORD will be issued to describe the Objective, Endstate, Exectution, Specified Tasks to Units, Roles and Responsiblities, Support, and Necessary Communications. This OPORD will be pushed down to the Divisions, and it will be pushed down further to Brigades, Battalions, and Companies. This is the concept we want to achieve when DHS provides a unified command for disaster preparedness and mitigation. Get everyone within the communications reach up down and sideways, and specify roles and responsibilities. Provide a common operating picture. The ultimate endstate of the Task Force is providing states, civil authorities, and hospitals with the support they need. I hope this analogy helps.

Having said that. From my perspective, DHS just assigned the leadership role to FEMA and the actions are not unified. Thus there is a lot of chaos. I don't think many civilians have the leadership and organizational skills to command a Task Force. A Corps Commander has those skills and ability to include large staffs and Divisions and units who understand business rules, protocols, and experiences to help the Corps Commander plan and execute missions and track them.

Response by SPC Kevin Ford made Apr 13 at 2020 1:28 AM

SPC Kevin Ford — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 01:28:39 -0400

There are a lot of good responses on this topic. One thing I don't think has been mentioned is that in the past the CDC has played a leadership role in global control and prevention of diseases, including novel diseases like COVID-19.

One thing that happened as part of "America First" is we pulled back from those efforts. Globally, what the US had done to help control diseases like COVID-19 didn't happen. Not only did we not control it over here, we didn't help control it in other countries and so it spilled over here in much more serious quantities. Helping control diseases in other countries is in our national interest. It helps us control it here. It was a failure across the board.

Response by SFC Martin Rickert made Apr 13 at 2020 5:49 PM

SFC Martin Rickert — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 17:49:11 -0400

It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017.

One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.

Response by SFC Martin Rickert made Apr 13 at 2020 5:51 PM

SFC Martin Rickert — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 17:51:10 -0400

We should be united in demanding to know why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was aware of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan early in December, maybe even November, and didn’t tell the rest of the world, when stopping the deadly spread might have been possible.

Response by PO1 William "Chip" Nagel made May 12 at 2020 11:24 AM

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel — Tue, 12 May 2020 11:24:52 -0400

MSgt Neil Greenfield Excellent Point!

Response by LCDR Joshua Gillespie made May 12 at 2020 4:10 PM

LCDR Joshua Gillespie — Tue, 12 May 2020 16:10:07 -0400

Personally, I don't think we know anywhere near enough with any certainty to begin assessing it holistically. One thing that does seem to be blatantly clear is that we're drowning in low-quality information, and suffer from a resultant "trust deficit". Imagine going on an operation with NCOs and officers you couldn't trust, making decisions on information even they couldn't trust, towards an objective not even the planners knew for certain they could trust. Trust is what binds any group of humans together, and once it's gone... it can be nearly impossible to restore it. If I were to hazard some very rough guesses, I'd suggest that moving forward, we need to step back from "details" (such as which states are doing what vs. others) and look at the "Big Picture". Data needs to be rigorously vetted and segregated. For example; if you're going to report the daily "death toll", then those numbers needs to come from a central source, reflect complete accuracy in terms of age, cause of death, location, prior morbidity factors, etc... and then be compared to known metrics such as "annual averages" across the same data sets. If 1,600 people die, but 1,000 of them fit within "common" identifiers... then we have to address the 600 "uncommon" as something entirely separate. If it can be critically confirmed that 300 of them would've died within roughly the same time frame regardless of COVID-19... that too needs to be taken into account. Frankly, I think those at the "top" sometimes get trapped by "Mustdosomethingnowitus", only to end up having to reverse their positions, or alter decisions... ultimately wasting more time and resources.