CV01. Protection: Nevada, Secret Plans = No Plans, Security Hinders Operations, CV03. Information: FEMA Website, Changing for Change, CV04. Politics: Mask Denial, China's Fault, CV05. Economics: Post Pandemic Boom, CV09. Arts, Creativity: Virtual Lakota (Sioux), Shared Isolation, CV15. Death: Italy, Recovery, CV15.1. Once a Minute, CV15.2. Death Doulas, CV18. Narrative, Social Reality: Chinese Nationalism, Populist Censorship, CV23. Polemic, Myphysis: Israel, Misleading War Metaphor, CV26. Environment, One Health: San Francisco, Staying Infection Free in an Infected World, CV28. Logistics: Logistical Sharing, CV28.1. Supply Chain Weaknesses, Meat Packing, OSHA
PDN Introduction.
CV01. Protection: Some Nevada Agencies Won’t Reveal Pandemic Plans, Months into Covid-19. Several other agencies have declined to provide their plans. Several cited the state executive order in February that exempted terrorism planning from public records laws. Most agencies routinely include plans for infectious disease events within a larger emergency plan that covers terrorism, natural disasters and other hazardous situations.
-A. Agencies that deny access to pandemic plans during a pandemic are inappropriately misusing the governor’s directive. The fear that the governor’s executive order would be abused to keep public documents hidden was well founded. The order was clearly focused on terrorism and critical infrastructure, not public health emergencies. A plan is never going to match the consequences and outcomes of an actual disaster. The value of a plan is the collaboration it takes to put the plan together.
-B. There is always a tension between balancing the needs of security so that one can be effective and operational when needed, and operations when security concerns hinder (sometimes neutralize) the effectiveness and availability of operations. Bottom line is that a plan that is not known by stakeholders is not a plan. In fact one of the goals of terrorism (and disinformation) is not the damage to a specific target but to heighten paranoia, distrust, secrecy, bunker mentality. A terror attack is exactly that, to create terror. Terror gives security the upper hand over operations and in its zealous protection that inadvertently neutralizes operations such a free movement, free press. These results in walls that don’t work as intended but are effective in degrading cooperation, othering of foreigners both external and internal, sending in thugs and making threats to control resistant authorities. These actions create the conditions that help achieve terrorist goals. In parademics opinion many of the anti bioterror, biodefense, biosecurity, have contributed to the US being ineffective and unavailable to deal with CV, and continue to hinder improvement in the control and containment of CV. The mind set should not be on security threats, but threats to functions, mission, capabilities, operations, some of which can be best solved with both active and passive security.
CV03. Information: New FEMA Website Launch. We have all been caught in "website hell" where we know the information has to be there, but you can't find it. Answering the call to simplify FEMA has a totally redesigned website. See the blog introducing the redesign, Introducing the New FEMA.gov. I encourage you to check out the redesigned FEMA.Gov website and see what is new. Note the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) page that is highlighted at the top.
-A. Besides being months late the information is very basic individual level information, albeit the half of the country that is not protecting itself from CV is probably unaware of this. From a disaster management point of view it offers very little for planning, response, mitigation, preparation – recognizing that should all have been left of outbreak and could have been available – post pandemic recovery is missing CV15↓. Furthermore to point out again it is parademics opinion that the phase model in common use by FEMA and most agencies is inappropriate for a biocalamity, 200520-CV29C, 200503-1, 200426-1, 200423-CV29. On the other hand there are encouraging signs that FEMA can eventually learn and gubergenic is being neutralized.
-B. POST COLLECTIO: One of the values of phases is that they give a sense that there is control and progress being made, that there is an understanding of the situations. Admitting that the situation is chaotic in not reassuring in the face of uncertainty. Unfortunately the expression of certainty undermines confidence when progress is clearly not being made, when there are delays in achieving the next phase. 200426-1.
-C. Staying Prepared in a Changing World. Many professions are steeped in tradition, including those in emergency preparedness and response organizations. In these well established environments (institutionalized silos), when asked to make a change to traditional practices, the response is sometimes simply, “No, this is how we’ve always done it”. Such thinking can leave communities underprepared for new, emerging, or evolving threats. ADDED Business Continuity: Where Do We Go from Here. MORE: Sep 2022 A Step by Step Guide to Writing a Business Continuity Plan for Your Business.
CV04. Politics: Herman Cain, Former GOP Presidential Candidate, Dies from COVID =2= =3=. There has been a spat =2= =3= =4= [MORE: Cartoon*A] of political figures who refused to wear masks who have come down with CV. They may start changing their behavior, but they may have trapped themselves into having to persist in taking the risk. Trump Blames China for Herman Cain Getting the Virus at His Rally Dying CV18↓. All States with Democratic Governors Now Have Mask Mandates, but Most with Republicans Don’t, 200727-CV03-A.
-*A. MORE: Lawmaker with Covid: My Health Choices Are up to Me. Critics: That’s What Women Assert, Rep. Louie Gohmert, who believes women should be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, is suddenly all about (his) freedom of choice. My Father Ignored Medical Expertise and Now He Has Covid, Rep. Louie Gohmert’s Daughter Says.
CV05. Economics: Whisper It, but Here Comes a 1920s Style, Post Pandemic Boom. Spanish flu saw huge loss of life but the recovery CV15↓ that followed offers a glimpse of what may happen today. Interesting points to consider as futuring CV31, but I have several disagreements with this. One of the most glaring is that the 1920's created the circumstances that resulted in the Great Depression of the 1930s 200623-CV05, which contributed to WWII, and in turn lead to the extreme return to normal of the 1950's and Cold War.
CV09. Arts, Creativity: Virtual Art Show Offers Encouragement to Lakota Artists. Some of the art has a different theme this year: Paintings feature masked subjects and beadwork now adorns cloth face coverings. “Art is an essential part of Lakota culture. It’s a part of life. The act of creating things of beauty and meaning is often a shared experience and the way that the culture is carried forward from generation to generation”.
-A. Since the pandemic arrived in the United States, a shared experience has often been one of isolation, especially on Pine Ridge, where tribal leadership enacted a series of strict lockdowns. Native American tribes across the nation have been especially vigilant to the pandemic, amid fears it could cripple small health care systems that treat high numbers of people with ongoing health conditions.
CV15. Death: Death Haunts Abandoned Shops of Italy's Worst Hit Town. Return to Coronavirus ground zero: In northern Italy the damage inflicted by Covid-19 casts a long shadow over attempts to recover. CV03A↑ CV05↑.
CV15.1. U.S. Records a Coronavirus Death Every Minute as Total Surpasses 150,000.
-A. ADDED Donald Trump Wrong to Say U.S. Has “One of the Lowest Mortality Rates in the World” from COVID-19.
-B. MORE: More than 150 More Americans Will Die of Coronavirus During Trump’s Saturday Golf Round, if the once a minute death rate is correct the number should be about 300 [Chart].
CV15.2. How Death Doulas Have Adapted End of Life Care Amid COVID-19. End of life doulas have always strived to be a support system for those who are terminally ill, but in 2020 the people who take on that responsibility have been challenged to think outside the box when it comes to caregiving. They’ve had to help their dying clients make unimaginable choices between risking virus exposure and spending their last days alone. They’ve also had their presence questioned at a time when their skills could be most valuable.
CV18. Narrative, Social Reality: How China Used Nationalism to Hide Coronavirus Truth. Thousands of Chinese nationalists sent death threats to an author for writing a diary documenting the world's first coronavirus lockdown. Chinese nationalists will defend the country in even the most dire of crises. Extreme nationalism and violent political discourse are present in every country, but experts fret about China in particular. Lack of freedoms for press or expression makes public opinion difficult to monitor, but most agree nationalism is rising in China – and that it's often buoyed by the government. China's education system has encouraged it for three decades, many argue. Another key factor: Strict censorship laws and an energetic propaganda machine amplify many narratives that nationalists cling to. CV04↑. 201109-CV17. 201219-CV03.
CV23. Polemic, Myphysis: Israel Botched Its Handling of the Coronavirus by Dubbing It War, Former Mossad Chief Says. Declaring war on COVID-19 got people believing that the authorities could destroy it quickly. Instead, a disintegration of society is possible.
CV26. Environment, One Health: San Francisco’s Lonely War Against Covid-19, the city could have crushed the coronavirus. Then Trump got in the way. Experts and local officials say the summer increase in cases doesn’t take away from what San Francisco has done. What it shows, instead, is the limits of what a local government can do – and the risk of relying on a county by county, state by state approach to a truly national crisis. We have to accept that we are all interrelated in a pandemic, we have to help each other out. The federal government is the one entity that could address these problems on a large scale. But President Donald Trump has ceded his role to the states and private actors – what his administration called the “state authority handoff” and described as one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations.
-A. Even at the national level ordering measure of containment and control for the whole country will not suffice. Global cooperation was required to stop CV, and now all that can be hoped for is mitigation of future CV events. This is a case of think local, act global, [Cartoon], 200701-CV12.
CV28. Logistics: Emergency Management’s Role in COVID-19 Response Logistics. In disasters, the logistics norm is that cities will try to meet the needs of their jurisdictions by first utilizing their own internal resources, requesting mutual aid, and also purchasing what is needed from the private sector. When those resources have been exhausted, cities “normally” turn to their respective county governments to request any additional equipment, supplies, and personnel they may require. The county follows the same process as cities, first by trying to fulfill resource requests internally. If that fails, they pass the request up to their state emergency management organizations. These organizations in turn try to meet the requests with resources available on hand and, failing that, they ask for federal resource assistance by going through the state to FEMA.
-A. One of the challenges in the above system comes when competing organizations begin overstating their needs as a hedge against potential shortages. Another challenge that was experienced with the COVID-19 response, and which is common to almost all disasters, is having multiple requests coming from different elements of the same organization for the same need. Reflects the current mind set of looking out for number 1, when looking out for all better serves number 1.
CV28.1. COVID-19 Impacts on Toilet Paper, Meat Expose Fragility of the Supply Chain. Expose is a better term than impact. The weakness of supply chains to a biocalamity and catastrophic disaster have been known for decades, but other priorities kept anything from being done. In actual fact the US has done remarkably well, with few shortages. There is the glaring exception of being and still facing medical surge manufacture, distribution, storage, supply shortages. Instead of empty shelves at stores within two weeks =2= =3= =4=, most vital supplies are still available either at physical locations (allowing for confrontations about masks) or online.
-A. 200711-19.1. Over 10,000 Tyson Employees Reportedly Test Positive for Covid. Argentina Confirms Covid-19 at Six Meat Plants, Halts Their China Exports. Iowa Health Department Lied About Coronavirus Outbreak at Meatpacking Plant. They Warned OSHA They Were in “Imminent Danger” at the Meat Plant. Now They’re Suing the Agency, 200620-CV01, OSHA Removes Covid-19 Guidance from Website for More Polish CV03 CV29.
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