What can we learn from this

[Jon Grider]

* We don't have enough reserves of PPE, and other medical necessities.
* We could be overly vulnerable to bio warfare because of the above.
* We don't not have imo a very coordinated or comprehensive response to these crisis between federal, state, and local agencies.
* Our supply chain can easily be compromised.
* Some in government used this crisis for political leverage.

Some pluses:

*We are a nation of many brave individuals, particularly those in the medical trenches taking risks to protect others.
* Individuals seem to pull together in crisis
*Many businesses sacrificed profits for the good of the masses.

Please add on if you care to

Mods delete this if you think it goes too far.

[Jim Koepke]

* Some in government used this crisis for political leverage.

Sadly, some in government are/have using/used this crisis for personal financial gain.

jtk

[Edwin Santos]

* That our quality and standard of life is perhaps more fragile that we sometimes like to think
* That things can change very quickly and that we should not take the important things in our lives for granted
* That nature and natural phenomena have the power to overwhelm us all
* That the scientific community is as important a line of defense for us as the military, in certain respects.
* I've learned that public health medicine is very different from the everyday practice of medicine that goes on in doctor's offices and hospitals.

Edwin

[Bryan Rocker]

* Most families/households due not maintain a large enough reserve of food and essentials to survive more than 2 or 3 days.
* A perceived shortage becomes a real shortage in a matter of ours
* The thin layer of civility will only be maintained as long as supplies hold out
* A person is a smart intelligent being, "people" are nervous and panicky (Men in Black)

Bryan

[Art Mann]

This time around, we have a shortage of ventilators because this particular virus reduces the ability to breathe. The next time around, we will be critically short of some other equipment or medicine. It isn't possible to anticipate and provide for every possible epidemic ahead of time.

Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, made this shockingly honest statement to an interviewer: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” It seems this crisis is no different.

[Jim Koepke]

This time around, we have a shortage of ventilators because this particular virus reduces the ability to breathe. The next time around, we will be critically short of some other equipment or medicine. It isn't possible to anticipate and provide for every possible epidemic ahead of time.

Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, made this shockingly honest statement to an interviewer: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” It seems this crisis is no different.

It is mostly shockingly honest by being taken out of context. This statement was made back in November of 2008:

Emanuel, Nov. 19, 2008: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. I think America as a whole in 1973 and 1974, and not just my view but obviously the administration's, missed the opportunity to deal with the energy crisis that was before us. For a long time our entire energy policy came down to cheap oil. This is an opportunity, what used to be long-term problems, be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area, things that we have postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity, for us, as I would say, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before. The good news, I suppose, if you want to see a silver lining, is the problems are big enough that they lend themselves to ideas from both parties for the solution.

You may recall a major energy company called Enron. Evidently they were gaming the power distribution system in California. They took down a major accounting firm with them.

In times of calm, no one worries about a coming crisis. It is in time of crisis when we can see of what people are really made.

jtk

[Art Mann]

I don't think that an economic rescue package should contain utterly unrelated controversial legislation like elements of the "Green New Deal". That is an unethical attempt to force unrelated change by holding the public hostage.

[Larry Frank]

I agree with Art. The only thing in the aid package should be related to the pandemic.

[Jon Grider]

I don't think that an economic rescue package should contain utterly unrelated controversial legislation like elements of the "Green New Deal". That is an unethical attempt to force unrelated change by holding the public hostage.

Agreed, no add ons from either party unrelated to the crisis at hand.

[Curt Harms]

I don't think that an economic rescue package should contain utterly unrelated controversial legislation like elements of the "Green New Deal". That is an unethical attempt to force unrelated change by holding the public hostage.

It is unethical and dishonest. It's also been going on for a long time, it just doesn't get noticed. And both parties have used it. I think there was an attempt in Congress to not allow adding pork to unrelated legislation. It died a quick death.

[Ronald Blue]

Some things will never change. There will always be people try to make political gain instead of working to aid those in need. As Art says you can't possibly anticipate ever possible scenario. Improved procedures on gathering test specimens will help to reduce the demand for N95 masks. People will be able to do nasal swabs at home and then they can be dropped off at specified locations. This is just coming online and the benefit could be significant. My question is this. Apple is donating 9 million masks apparently that are in their warehouses. I don't know why they have so many but....why are they just now stepping up to the plate? For a week now there have been numerous requests for help in this area because they were using them at a record pace. Today they decide to do the right thing? I'm not impressed. This sounds like the same company that tried to force their computers on you in the 80's while IBM allowed anyone who wanted to clone the PC.

As for the ventilator shortage. It would seem there is enough blame to go around here but it's easy to blame the federal government for all the shortage. Obviously they have some in reserve which they are distributing. What about the hospitals? Medical supply companies? States? I know the military certainly would have some as well. I don't know how many ventilators are typically needed in a normal week without such a catastrophic event. How many are they supposed to have available? It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight. Sometimes the view out the windshield has a lot of bug splatter. I'm not sure that the combined response hasn't been excellent.

[Doug Garson]

This crisis has brought out the worst and best in people. I've heard of people being very selfish or greedy hoarding necessary supplies or buying up all they can and reselling for a profit, I've also seen Craigslist postings where people are offering their excess supplies for free on a limited one per person basis.

[Jim Falsetti]

We learned the USA and, almost all of the rest of the world, is not prepared for a calamity of this scale. We learned pointing fingers and worrying about what should have been done is a waste of precious time and energy.

I learned regarding virus crisis readiness, it's "difficult" to have all the required equipment in storage, usable, and ready to deploy, at the local, state, or federal government level. For example, NYS Governor Cuomo said today one ventilator costs $25,000 and they need 20,000 of them now. That's a big investment to have sitting in inventory. Would 20,000 ventilators, if in storage for a decade or two, all still be usable?

I learned the media in general is not asking helpful questions. Another example that I haven't seen - how many N95 masks are required? Maybe we can estimate it - if a hospital has 1000 persons/day that needed the masks, and they can only be worn once, and they need to be changed frequently (assume three times an hour), it's some thing like 24,000 masks/day. And the AHA advises there are 6,146 hospitals in the USA. Do we need between 5-30 million a day? Do we have the capacity to supply that many masks from anywhere? Or is the need much, much less?

Maybe we learned we have a lot of zero-risk legal liability speed bumps built into our systems.

We learned really smart people are working on this crisis, and once they get through this one, we will learn that they are planning for the next one.

[Rod Sheridan]

We learned the USA and, almost all of the rest of the world, is not prepared for a calamity of this scale. We learned pointing fingers and worrying about what should have been done is a waste of precious time and energy.

I learned regarding virus crisis readiness, it's "difficult" to have all the required equipment in storage, usable, and ready to deploy, at the local, state, or federal government level. For example, NYS Governor Cuomo said today one ventilator costs $25,000 and they need 20,000 of them now. That's a big investment to have sitting in inventory. Would 20,000 ventilators, if in storage for a decade or two, all still be usable?

I learned the media in general is not asking helpful questions. Another example that I haven't seen - how many N95 masks are required? Maybe we can estimate it - if a hospital has 1000 persons/day that needed the masks, and they can only be worn once, and they need to be changed frequently (assume three times an hour), it's some thing like 24,000 masks/day. And the AHA advises there are 6,146 hospitals in the USA. Do we need between 5-30 million a day? Do we have the capacity to supply that many masks from anywhere? Or is the need much, much less?

Maybe we learned we have a lot of zero-risk legal liability speed bumps built into our systems.

We learned really smart people are working on this crisis, and once they get through this one, we will learn that they are planning for the next one.

To hold equipment in stockpile, you would have to rotate it to keep it up to date.

If there was central purchasing for all healthcare, this could be accomplished at very little cost, or no cost if the scale brought prices down.

Sometimes everyone doing their own thing is a detriment to society.

[Edwin Santos]

Sometimes everyone doing their own thing is a detriment to society.

It seems painfully clear that your statement is very accurate in the context of a public health epidemic.

It's a real paradox for many of us that we have a situation where (1) public health is at odds with economic health, (2) public health is at odds with the idea of individual freedom and libertarianism - i.e. minimal government intervention in our lives.
Nothing is more important to most westerners than our freedom and our pocketbooks. Both are under assault.

All the tools normally used by our Federal government(s) are basically ineffective. The virus cannot be shot, bombed, bought off, threatened, negotiated with. It knows no boundaries, plays no favorites, belongs to no political party.
In the absence of a magic pill for treatment or a vaccine, the only solution is to starve the virus of fuel by increased physical distance and isolation. And if we let up off the accelerator too soon, the virus can make a comeback, like what may be happening in some of the Asian countries.

If there was ever a time when the world's nations should work together and adopt a cohesive collective strategy, it would be now but the recent years of separatist national politics has really made the world's nations more disconnected and mistrustful of each other than before.

If there's a hope, I think it's technology. I believe the international scientific community is less dysfunctional than the international political community, so I pray the scientists will work collectively, and armed with today's technology will come up with an effective vaccine.
Edwin