part of the job i did for 18 years and ended last June was planning responses- and part of that was pandemic responses... they were written and then updated ever-so-often (on a schedule, actually) to reflect new advances or tech....
this 'response' reflects nothing of those plans.
it beckons a memory of another 'response' i was part of back at the onset of Iraqi Freedom- we had a team that was responsible for a particular type of response.. well practiced and equipped.. and then one night out of the blue (and just as CENTCOM was arriving with metric tons of brass) that something happened smack dab in the middle of that teams AoR of response....
what do you think happened?
the Captain in charge of that team was instantly 'out ranked' by a Colonel (who's occupation never brought him anywhere near the occupation of the captain) who decided to 'take charge'... who was then outranked by a General... who was immediately outranked by yet another General.... so the 'response' was what we have, technically classified, a 'cluster fuck'.
when the dust cleared so did the brass... the captain had to answer to the base commander (a colonel- all the heavy brass were CENTCOM and not part of the base's PP&PO).... the poor guy was lit up- especially because he didn't know the names of the higher ranking officers (and if he did, which i suspect he did, he wasn't about to throw them under the bus)... of course when CENTCOM caught wind of this meeting, they invited themselves.
here is the punch line: the guy was beat up in that board meeting by the brass was beat up by the very brass that caused all the trouble but who wouldn't take responsibility for their own actions. according to the captain, who later confided this to me, their primary interest was "why didn't his team follow procedures?"///
i fear something like this is coming at the tail end of this current thing....
