I have kept relatively quiet about my experience in this of matter , but:
(1) One of my first jobs out of college was with a State Dept. of Health, both in public health and in microbial laboratory analysis. I dealt with CDC on epidemological reporting, I also particpated in a small regional Cholea outbreak containment back in the late '70's. and early 80's. One old salty regional manager .... he was about 70 at the time, half the time drunk
, but very wise, and everyone valued his council. He confided in us that 3 times out of 4, the panic of an epidemic is more damaging than the disease itself. Fear and disinformation are the biggest enemies of those in the public health sector.
(2) Toward the end of my career, in my tenure the Safety, Health, and Environmental Manager of a petrochemical plant, I was tasked in conjunction with the rest of the facilties in the country, with preperation of a Communicable Disease Contingency Plan. One thing that was so important is the fact that proper planning, preperation, and coordinaton on wide scale is needed to sucessfully address the containment and spread of the contagion. All levels of governments get an "F" IMO in that regard.
With that...... this is and what should be the driving principles in priority order....
(1) Identify, isolate ,protect, and sustain critical national infrastructure. examples....Utilities, Industries, Supply Chain, Medical, Emergency Services.
(2) Identify, isolate, and sustain at risk populations.
(3) Establish and segregate facilties (hospitals, outpatient stations, dispensaries, etc) for contagion vs. general population needs. Work should have been started weeks ago preparing satelitte hospitals and facilites to address this.
(4) Continue commerce, as normal, except taking extraordinary means like we are doing right now to protect and slow down spread of the disease.- WE CAN ADRESS THIS WITHOUT DESTROYING OUR ECONOMY.
