What have you been doing since 9/11?
Context:
It was fair to assume, after 9/11 that some kind of a bio or chemical attack could have been in the cards for the future. Such weapons had been used in the Middle East.
As various agencies were realigned in order to deal with the new threats and Homeland Security was created it only stands to reason that some of the objectives had to be to engineer, plan, drill and prepare for quick and effective response to a wide range of potential attacks.
I am not a biologist or chemist nor do I have any real experience or knowledge dealing with these kinds of attack scenarios.
This is going to sound really weird, but, well, I have three large German Shepherd Dogs and I've had cases of all three coming down with diarrhea. Having to clean up such a mess teaches you a thing or two about the spread and handling of bodily fluids.
After experiencing that just once I put into place a system and a kit to be able to deal with the situation more effectively. It's nasty and I really didn't want to suffer like I did the first time. I am happy to say that my planning worked well.
Now, using that example, had I been involved with DHS and CDC back in 9/11 I would have devoted serious time and resources to creating and equipping rapid response teams to deal with chemical and bio attacks in all major cities.
I would have designed and tested container-based (as in converted cargo containers) emergency response systems. I would have developed a set of isolation environments within containers. I would have staged these in every major city in the country at appropriate locations. And, of course, I would have conducted quarterly drills in order to ensure that everyone who might potentially have to be involved in dealing with a chemical or bio attack was trained to the best of our abilities.
I probably would have included both civilian and military personnel in this system.
All that would be missing would be that music that plays in the Transformers movies when the trucks, planes and ships deploy to do battle. In other words, I would require a system that was that ready to go into action. Just like the movies.
So far, I've watched every CDC conference surrounding this Ebola business. It's embarrassing. It's scary. It is absolutely astounding to me that no reporter is asking this simple question: What have you been doing since 9/11? And I say so because the story coming out of the CDC sure sounds like, well, amateur hour is too harsh, but let's just say it is obvious they were not ready for this.
When you have the director of the CDC on camera saying things like "We now have two teams supervising operations at the hospital so we can make improvements". In other words, one team wasn't enough, you guys didn't have your act together, you have left the response to these kinds of incidents to the random training, equipment and judgement of any random hospital in the US (because there was no way to know where the index patient might land, right?). Why weren't these drills, supervised by not one, but five teams of observers and experts conducted five or ten years ago. Why now? Why do you have to figure it out now?
To say that it is obvious that these people have squandered 13 years is a grotesque understatement. What would happen if we had twenty patients arrive into twenty different cities? Was there a plan? Is there a plan? No. Of course not.
I am trying like hell to not get political here. But, you know, every corner we turn we see example after example of just how bad big government can be. They can't manage building a website that a team of five college dropouts could have aced in six months. And we trust them to protect us from bio hazards? What have they been doing during the last thirteen years? If they are not incompetent, what are they?
Here's reality, going back to my dog example. I take a nice large building and spray the interior with liquefied dog shit. I then take a group of engineers and task them with cleaning said building. They have all the tools they need to develop protective gear, tools, equipment and procedures to do it quickly, safely and thoroughly. And they are also tasked with developing these systems and procedures such that we could easily containerize them and scale them to be able to instantly deal with liquefied dog-shit attacks anywhere in the US.
How long do you think it would take to have an absolutely amazing system in place if we took that away from government and held a contest open to any and all private entrepreneurs? Each of 100 teams gets a ten million dollar grant from the US government. The winning team walks away with a contract and a $100 million dollar prize. A year? At the most? I would think so. The CDC and DHS have had 13 years to accomplish exactly this and prepare for the potential of a massive chemical or biological attack in the US and the best they can do is what we are seeing now? With sick nurses getting on planes? And television anchors breaking quarantine? And "breaches of protocol"? What protocol?
Unbelievable. In my world this isn't about firing someone it goes way beyond that. This is criminal. This isn't even political as it spans administrations controlled by both major political parties.
Now, don't get me wrong, I happen to think that this is reasonably unlikely to fully derail here in the US. Not because the CDC and DHS have it together. Nope. Simply because Ebola doesn't is hard to transmit and we don't have a ten, twenty or a hundred cases spread all over the place. We had ONE guy that got through. And that was enough to expose just how fucked the response system happens to be. I really hope nobody else dies.
It might get a little scarier before it gets better, but I think we will be OK. What's got me rattled is that we are watching our response system engage in real time experiments with people's lives in front of the entire world when the fundamental procedural aspects having to do with responding to something like this should have been fully worked out, tested, verified, re-tested and forward deployed years ago. Not now. Years ago. Dealing with fighting a specific virus is a different story, that's biology, that's not procedure and readiness in terms of forward deployment of resources to deal with containment, etc.
Again, simple question:
What have they been doing since 9/11?
Are we ever going to hold any of these people accountable?
Why doesn't anyone ask the right questions?