COVID-19: The Three Questions People Wish to Avoid

When bad things happen, the after-action reviews all ask three basic questions about events leading up to the event. These same questions will be asked about the United States' response to the coronavirus pandemic that appears to just now be starting to plateau, with cases and deaths leveling off.

The three questions are:

1. What did you know?
2. When did you know it?
3. What did you do about it?

This report raises questions about how early something was known, US intelligence reportedly predicted COVID-19 'could be a cataclysmic event' as far back as November.

This is earlier than I had placed any information I had read previously. I had always figured it was early December that the problem was recognized and then the Chinese confirmed that there was human-to-human transmission in late December -- that raised flags everywhere.

My first writing about COVID-19 was on Jan. 14, 2020 when there were news items about the 900-bed temporary hospitals being built in China. Based on what I know now, I figure we should have been beginning to ramp up nationally by early February. Even at that particular time, we were still sitting flat-footed as a nation. In order to bring additional resources to bear, we would have had to start early enough with manufacturing the personal protective equipment (PPE) that would be needed. 

It is great that ventilator manufacturing will be surging soon, but too late for the surge in cases we have had in this first round of infections. Perhaps they will come in very handy when and if there is a second or even third wave. In my estimation, we are a minimum of six weeks behind the power/infection curve.

I still say that the title of the future report that will be written should have the subtitle of "Too Little, Too Late."

Garry Briese shared the link above.