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From this article, it seems like the simulation was acted out by people who were formerly in leadership/advisory positions in the US government. How likely is

From this article, it seems like the simulation was acted out by people who were formerly in leadership/advisory positions in the US government. How likely is it that current leaders heed their advice when an outbreak happens? Wouldn't it be more useful to have the people currently in power preparing for this? Honestly asking - I have no idea about the modus operandi of Washington bureaucracy.

pstuart 8y ago
At the risk of making a political statement here (sorry dang!), the current administration in Washington seems to be highly resistant to outside advice.
- Asparagirl 8y ago
  ”...Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, had been removed from his position as the head of global health security on the White House’s National Security Council after the Trump Administration cut funds for fighting pandemics.”
- mullen 8y ago
  It is safe to say that the current administration in Washington is incapable of making any intelligent decision based on facts. The current President is too much of an intellectual light weight; lacking the understanding and ability to grasp complex and nuanced issues he would have to have to handle a pan-epidemic. He also does not have the talent around him to help or make any decision that would be correct and wise during a pan-epidemic.
  - duxup 8y ago
    I'm not even sure ability is the issue when it comes to grasping things. I think it is simply he chooses not to understand in favor of gut instinct and even what he last read / saw on TV. Like you said I don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but I think there's a difference between trying an unable and simply choosing not to try understand a thing (for whatever reason that is).
    - mullen 8y ago
      > I'm not even sure ability is the issue when it comes to grasping things. I am pretty sure it is lack of ability. Some of the reported interactions between him and other world leaders is pretty alarming. For example, Merkel of Germany had to tell him 11 times that he could not negotiate trade deals between the United States and Germany because Germany is part of the EU. (http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-eu-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-eu...) He uses his gut instinct all the time because that is all he has.
  - s_kilk 8y ago
    > lacking the understanding and ability to grasp complex and nuanced issues he would have to have to handle a pan-epidemic. I mean, the guy can't even read.
philwelch 8y ago
People who currently have these jobs are generally too busy to spend all day wargaming through a simulated pandemic. You’d be lucky to sit them down long enough to play the board game Pandemic. What probably ends up happening is that this gets turned into a written report that some staffer has on hand to pull out and brief the key decision makers on. As the article points out, the learnings from these exercises sometimes get turned into actionable policy, e.g. Bush implementing continuity-of-government plans. The most similar thing I know about personally is military contingency plans. My dad was a Marine Corps officer and, among other things, worked on contingency plans in the late 1960’s. There are standing contingency plans for almost every conceivable military operation the US might perform, ranging from amphibious landings on the fjords of Norway to capturing any given small Caribbean island. The plans don’t always get followed, though. My dad spent a lot of time developing a contingency plan to capture the island of Grenada, and he spent the rest of his life bitterly insisting that his plan was far better than how that operation actually turned out!
- cozos 8y ago
  That's actually really cool. What was his plan like compared to the actual operation? Also, what kind of methodologies would one use to plan something like this?
  - philwelch 8y ago
    He passed away some years ago so I'm just going off my recollections here. His main complaint was that the actual operation used an unnecessarily large cross-service force (largely for political reasons; the Air Force and Army didn't want to miss out on the chance to get involved) when his plan required less than a division of Marines with accompanying air support. The contingency plans themselves are highly classified, and none of the plans nor the associated maps and whatnot are allowed to leave a specifically secured facility, making this one of the few times in his military career that my dad couldn't just take home his paperwork at the end of the day. In the case of the Grenada plan, there was already an existing plan that is reevaluated and updated with new intelligence, doctrine, etc. on a periodic basis. One detail of the plan my dad mentioned investigating was a standing tank (i.e. a large barrel for storing liquids) in the middle of a field on the island. The old plan entailed securing the tank and using it as temporary fuel storage, but my dad was suspicious. It turns out the tank was in the middle of a sugar cane field. It was a molasses tank. Probably not safe or feasible for fuel storage. Even writing this out, I find this story a little hard to believe, but that's the level of detail the military, at least, puts into their contingency plans.
duxup 8y ago
I can't imagine the potentially catastrophically random decisions made by the current Trump administration when it would come to something as serious as a pandemic....

pstuart 8y ago

At the risk of making a political statement here (sorry dang!), the current administration in Washington seems to be highly resistant to outside advice.

Asparagirl 8y ago
”...Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, had been removed from his position as the head of global health security on the White House’s National Security Council after the Trump Administration cut funds for fighting pandemics.”
mullen 8y ago
It is safe to say that the current administration in Washington is incapable of making any intelligent decision based on facts. The current President is too much of an intellectual light weight; lacking the understanding and ability to grasp complex and nuanced issues he would have to have to handle a pan-epidemic. He also does not have the talent around him to help or make any decision that would be correct and wise during a pan-epidemic.
- duxup 8y ago
  I'm not even sure ability is the issue when it comes to grasping things. I think it is simply he chooses not to understand in favor of gut instinct and even what he last read / saw on TV. Like you said I don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but I think there's a difference between trying an unable and simply choosing not to try understand a thing (for whatever reason that is).
  - mullen 8y ago
    > I'm not even sure ability is the issue when it comes to grasping things. I am pretty sure it is lack of ability. Some of the reported interactions between him and other world leaders is pretty alarming. For example, Merkel of Germany had to tell him 11 times that he could not negotiate trade deals between the United States and Germany because Germany is part of the EU. (http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-eu-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-eu...) He uses his gut instinct all the time because that is all he has.
- s_kilk 8y ago
  > lacking the understanding and ability to grasp complex and nuanced issues he would have to have to handle a pan-epidemic. I mean, the guy can't even read.

philwelch 8y ago

People who currently have these jobs are generally too busy to spend all day wargaming through a simulated pandemic. You’d be lucky to sit them down long enough to play the board game Pandemic. What probably ends up happening is that this gets turned into a written report that some staffer has on hand to pull out and brief the key decision makers on. As the article points out, the learnings from these exercises sometimes get turned into actionable policy, e.g. Bush implementing continuity-of-government plans. The most similar thing I know about personally is military contingency plans. My dad was a Marine Corps officer and, among other things, worked on contingency plans in the late 1960’s. There are standing contingency plans for almost every conceivable military operation the US might perform, ranging from amphibious landings on the fjords of Norway to capturing any given small Caribbean island. The plans don’t always get followed, though. My dad spent a lot of time developing a contingency plan to capture the island of Grenada, and he spent the rest of his life bitterly insisting that his plan was far better than how that operation actually turned out!

cozos 8y ago
That's actually really cool. What was his plan like compared to the actual operation? Also, what kind of methodologies would one use to plan something like this?
- philwelch 8y ago
  He passed away some years ago so I'm just going off my recollections here. His main complaint was that the actual operation used an unnecessarily large cross-service force (largely for political reasons; the Air Force and Army didn't want to miss out on the chance to get involved) when his plan required less than a division of Marines with accompanying air support. The contingency plans themselves are highly classified, and none of the plans nor the associated maps and whatnot are allowed to leave a specifically secured facility, making this one of the few times in his military career that my dad couldn't just take home his paperwork at the end of the day. In the case of the Grenada plan, there was already an existing plan that is reevaluated and updated with new intelligence, doctrine, etc. on a periodic basis. One detail of the plan my dad mentioned investigating was a standing tank (i.e. a large barrel for storing liquids) in the middle of a field on the island. The old plan entailed securing the tank and using it as temporary fuel storage, but my dad was suspicious. It turns out the tank was in the middle of a sugar cane field. It was a molasses tank. Probably not safe or feasible for fuel storage. Even writing this out, I find this story a little hard to believe, but that's the level of detail the military, at least, puts into their contingency plans.

duxup 8y ago

I can't imagine the potentially catastrophically random decisions made by the current Trump administration when it would come to something as serious as a pandemic....