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Who could have known?
No government can be 100 percent prepared for anything, but that does not mean it was as unthinkable as Trump* is trying to portray it now.
Richard Burr (R-N.C.) knew on Feb. 27 when he privately offered a dire forecast for the coronavirus, saying, as first reported by NPR, “It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” and “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”
That same day Trump* predicted the 15 cases the country was seeing at that point would soon be reduced to zero.
The Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise provided local, state, federal, nongovernment organizations and private sector partners an opportunity to practice implementing response actions, as well as engage in candid discussions about response, resource, and capability challenges during an influenza pandemic across all levels of government.
5 . Resources
5 . 1 . Scarcity
5 .1.1. The current medical countermeasure supply chain and production capacity cannot meet the demands imposed by nations during a global influenza pandemic .
The U . S . lacks the ability to produce or source some of the inputs necessary to produce vaccine in sufficient quantities to respond to the domestic requirements of a severe influenza pandemic . Further compounding this challenge , global manufacturing capacity will also be unable to meet domestic demand for medical countermeasures , including personal protective equipment and ancillary supplies (i. e. , syringes ), and it is anticipated that countries will keep their own stockpiled supplies for their own citizens . The U . S. also lacks domestic manufacturing capacity for the production of sufficient quantities of personal protective equipment, needles, and syringes . Domestic supplies of on -hand stock of antiviral medications , needles, syringes , N95 respirators, ventilators , and other ancillary medical supplies are limited and difficult to restock , because they are often
manufactured overseas .
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