I wrote my first column on the pandemic almost two and a half years ago, before it was a pandemic, and in that column I explained my experience with issues relating to viral epidemics. Briefly, at the end of the Aughts I co-chaired two congressional commissions with Senator Bob Graham on the national-security dangers of biological agents. Senator Graham and I were so concerned by what we learned that we then started a nonprofit organization that conducted what is still the only stem-to-stern evaluation of America’s pandemic-resilience capabilities.
In October 2011, our nonprofit issued a report card on the public-health system’s preparedness for a global event. After what has happened in the last 30 months, no one will be surprised to learn that the system as it existed then got failing grades. Since that time I’ve lectured on the subject and also participated in war games involving hypothetical pandemic-response exercises.
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