Host Christine Warnke asked herself this and then read Rethinking Readiness: A Brief Guide to Twenty-First-Century Megadisasters by Jeff Schlegelmilch. Then she decided to invite Jeff who is the Director for the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute to talk about his book and the readiness of the United States with Covid-19, since his areas of expertise includes public health preparedness, community resilience and the integration of private and public sector capabilities. Listen to him explains how the United States has been developing Disaster Policy and Disaster Practice for decades with Bioterrorism, like Anthrax, which aided the development for Covid-19 Vaccination Programs from the blueprint of the research on how to distribute to the public.
The United States has been thinking about disasters for awhile and we’ve come to understand that human development is contributing to the over arching threat and the underlying vulnerabilities. Human activity can also be used to reverse and mitigate the activity. Everything from our healthcare to our infrastructure and our national security systems. Jeff gives a guide and explains the 5 categories from his book that frame out what we face, bio-threats that include: Pandemics, Climate Change, Major Infrastructure Collapse, Cyberattacks, and Nuclear Conflict.
If 9/11 was the start of modern era disaster management, Hurricane Katrina, broaden the focus to understand the impact of natural disasters and infrastructure damage. Intersecting with governments, partnering with communities, and figuring out who’s making the decisions. Katrina changed the landscape of emergency management. In the Gulf ,many people also experienced oil spills in the area and experienced multiple natural disasters. They continue to struggle with since many lost everything they had and even had to relocate to another state never to return.
Jeff Schlegelmilch knows that the Federal Government needs to get the resources to the State and Local Health Departments that have been preparing for this for decades, but still need all the help they can get, exhausting medical resources already. Montgomery County is at 79.2% in patient beds occupied currently.
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