I've seen it time and again with disaster exercises and actual events. There are after-action reports and presentations made at conferences. I can tell you that every emergency management conference for the next five years will have coronavirus sessions with keynotes from speakers who endured the worst of the disease in their jurisdictions.
However, the more traditional route for learning is to "experience it yourself." We, as people, have a difficult time learning from the experiences of others. This is called out very nicely by this article about the political situation in Spain or the first and second phase of denial.
- It won't happen
- If it does happen, it won't happen to me
Which leads to missing the opportunity to respond early and intervene before an event reaches crisis proportions. See how Spain treated the coronavirus outbreak in Italy as a "spectator sport."
Spain’s Coronavirus Crisis Accelerated as Warnings Went Unheeded
I would also point out that a large march of women, as the virus was already in the country, helped spread the virus, much as we surmise happened with Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.
