Given the long and repetitive history of pestilence, plague, and epidemics there’s no good reason to be surprised by our current pandemic. Since no early warning system exists and none is foreseeable, the pandemic now afflicting the human race was logically predicable. The time, characteristics, and intensity of our present affliction could not be predicted.
Despite these limits to our predictive ability, it was possible to take steps which would have made our present problems far more manageable.
First, the U.S. government could have established a network of regional centers combining research centers for studying emergent pathogens with facilities for speedy manufacture and distribution of vaccines and curatives.
Second, stockpiles of medical supplies – masks, gloves, gowns, sterilization equipment, and ventilators could have been built up. No need to establish a National Toilet Taper Strategic Reserve. Rumors that if it exists, it would be enough to smother the hoarding instinct.
Third, a large network of well supplied, fully equipped, mobile, strategically placed field hospitals with trained staff could be maintained on a permanent basis.
Fourth, the rule of sufficiency would be suspended in the provision of ICUs, hospital wards, doctors, nurses and medical technicians. Anticipating a pandemic outbreak requires provision well beyond what we need to deal with ordinary, predictable demand, there will be time constraints on the sudden expansion of skilled personnel.
Fifth, a thorough, comprehensive review of federal laws, regulations, and mandates which impede the development of new drugs, vaccines and medical devices would be required. Legal and regulatory road blocks grow of their own accord and the different regulatory departments, bureaus, and agencies tend to do their own thing regardless of the total effect. And these entities are as self-interested and competitive as private corporations. More, they are often infected with the “People before profits” slogan. The assumption that energizes this idiotic mind-set assumes that the invention and production of the means for helping people should never be motivated by anything but philanthropy.
These five steps were advocated by Sen. William Harrison Frist (R., Tenn.), Senate Majority Leader from 2003 to 2007. It’s no surprise that he made preparation for the inevitable pandemic a special project. He had studied health care policy at Princeton University and earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School. Before defeating the incumbent senator, he worked as a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and several other hospitals.
His proposals were not his own alone. They were advocated by Dr. Anthony Fauci, among others. Frist repeatedly made the case for prudent preparation in the U.S. Senate, Harvard Medical School, at Davos, and in the White House. President Bush adopted his warning in one of his speeches.
Frist honored his promise to serve two terms and left politics in January 2007 with nothing to show for his advocacy. He should have known that prudence has never been politically attractive. It can sound good in speeches, but the pragmatic politician sees no pay-off from making it into policy. If you advocate it in 2007 and the need for it has not become obvious to the voters by, say, 2017, you get no credit.
John Frary of Farmington, the GOP candidate for U.S. Congress in 2008, is a retired history professor, an emeritus Board Member of Maine Taxpayers United, a Maine Citizen’s Coalition Board member, and publisher of FraryHomeCompanion.com. He can be reached at jfrary8070@aol.com.