Pandemic: Warning and Reality
By September 2020, worldwide cases of Covid-19 total 29 million, with over 900,000 deaths. The virus has dominated news, both about the pandemic itself and the economic crisis it has caused. Expectations for the world economy range from a worse recession with a longer recovery than the one experienced a decade ago, to something akin to the depression a century ago.
Some Covid-19 reporting has referred to a report warning of a pandemic, prepared by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), but largely ignored. The report had a remarkable genesis in 2005. At the time, historian John M. Barry had just completed a book about the 1918 flu pandemic titled The Great Influenza. An estimated 500 million people were infected, and between 50 and 100 million died. While on vacation at his Texas ranch, President George W. Bush read Barry’s book, and Bush was seized by the necessity for the U.S. to prepare for a future pandemic.
Upon his return to Washington, President Bush passed the book to his Director of Homeland Security with instructions to prepare a national strategy. On November 1, 2005, he addressed the NIH, outlining his plan; its elements sound familiar to us today:
- Bio-surveillance to detect, quantify and respond to outbreaks in humans and animals
- Stockpiling vaccines and antiviral drugs
- Accelerating development of new vaccine technologies
- Stockpiling critical supplies of face masks, ventilators and personal protective gear
- Limiting nonessential movement of people, goods and services in outbreak areas
- Restricting public gatherings and avoiding nonessential travel
- Providing guidance on social distancing measures and quarantines
- Emphasizing the roles and responsibilities of individuals in preventing spread of an outbreak
The plan, estimated to cost $7.1 billion, was published in a 17-page document titled National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. A recent ABC News report characterized the effort to implement the plan over the following three years as “intense” but “not sustained,” as “other priorities and crises took hold.” Elements of the plan have guided current response to Covid-19, but, according to Paul Biasco of Business Insider, “much of the plan has been ignored or contradicted by the Trump administration. The result has been a delayed and chaotic response to the pandemic.”
Our reality in the U.S. in September 2020 is 6.5 million cases of Covid-19 and nearly 200,000 deaths. Unemployment increased from 3.5% in February to 14.7% in April, as about 30 million workers claimed jobless benefits. Air travel dropped by 90%. U.S. travelers were prohibited from visiting Canada and European countries. Would implementation and maintenance of Bush’s plan have appreciably reduced these statistics? Will the immediacy of Covid-19 make a difference in preparation for the next pandemic?
An article in The Economist says something about human response to health warnings. In 1845 The Economist compared belief in contagion to the former beliefs in astrology and witchcraft, concluding this belief would die out too. In 1854 an editorial in The Times said, “We prefer to take our chance of cholera and the rest rather than be bullied into health.”