From 11 to 3 employees. Doesn't seem that outrageous outside of such a time of crisis (since this lab seem dedicated solely to outbreaks, not research), which is when the parent entity should temporarily allocate more people.
I hope I never have you as my manager If you think a ~70% reduction in head count isn't outrageous.
3 does seem a bit low, though.
You should have mentioned this up front so we all knew you were fully qualified to understand the staffing needs of critical governmental health organizations.
Do you think some of them were wasting their time, by posting on various online forums only slightly related to their jobs?
In the unlikely event excess ambulance drivers are needed we'll temporarily hire them on an ad hoc basis at double the normal rate. They will obviously happily jump on this opportunity, working less than 5% of the year at double pay is much better for just those hours than being paid 60% of what you'd get as an ambulance driver in another career all year round and actually being able to afford your mortgage.
Sounds like the lag time between going from 11 to 3 employees and having an outbreak was ~a year, so unless this is wrapped up fast enough and cheaply enough to cost less than 8 FTEs, we didn’t save a whole lot of money and we caused a whole lot of distress, so it’s hard to really call this a win.