Governors were warned of a pandemic years ago, told to stockpile. Why didn't they do more?

[LiberalArkie]

Less than two years ago, county officials in Los Angeles warned that deadly disease outbreaks were becoming a “serious threat” and that the county’s public health system still suffered from “gaps” in “strategy” and “resource preparation,” including a “limited number of ventilators.”

“Los Angeles County is one of the most vulnerable to an emerging infectious disease threat,” the local authorities wrote in a July 2018 report.

Snip

Indeed, in December 2008, South Carolina’s Department of Health issued a report saying: “Federal funding for the pandemic influenza preparedness program has ended, and no state funds have been appropriated to continue public health preparedness efforts for pandemic influenza.”

Less than three years later, California cut off the money to store and maintain its much-touted stockpile of ventilators and critical supplies, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Snip

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/governors-warned-pandemic-years-ago-told-stockpile-didnt/story?id=70331277

[DTomlinson]

1. Cassandras are always punished.

[Igel]

2. These days they're mostly just ignored.

Cassandras are usually wrong or trivially right--predict a recession every year and at some point you're likely to be right.

When people predicted a recession for late 2016 or early 2017, odds were in their favor. And they knew that if they were wrong, nobody would remember that they staked their reputation on something that didn't happen.

Even when the one market reporter after Trump won reported on how markets reacted so negatively because of Trump wasn't quite silent the next day when the markets rebounded and exceeded their previous day's high. Some Trumpsters said the rebound was because of Trump, and the reporter who had closely linked market performance to election outcome just the day before was very preachy--you can't tie what the market does to something like the election, it's really bad practice and the Trump supporters are fools for doing it.

I just stared at the radio when I heard him say that.

But it's still the case that most of the time the catastrophes that could happen don't, not because we do things so wise but because they're not just unliked but unlikely.

At the same time, if you're a politician you can store a lot of stuff for the future or spend money in public ways that show you care about voters or your supporters. Even Obama drew down millions of N95 masks and when he restored stuff to the national stockpile, he made the announcement--he'd store vaccines and antivirals, both high tech/edgy and directly addressing worries. (Both of which, however, have fairly short lifespans and are fairly specific--but he was coming off the H1N1 crisis and he was stockpiling things for the H1N1 recurrence that never came ... Again, most catastrophes sail right on by.) It's fashionable to say that he *also* wanted more PPE and the nasty, selfish (R) in Congress stopped him, but given limited resources he chose what he chose. Personally, I like to think I'd have gone for the PPE, if only because it wasn't treating just the last problem, but also because it's more durable, but hindsight is 20/20.

[gratuitous]

3. There's very little elastic in state budgets

Stockpiling and storing supplies just isn't in the mix for a lot of states. After they take care of roads, fund schools, and give away any leftovers as tax abatements for companies that may or may not keep up their end of the bargain, states don't have money to pay for frivolous expenditures like disaster preparedness. Citizens have been conditioned to expect full services for lower and lower tax revenues, and collecting extra revenue for ventilators and PPE just sets off the loudest of the loudmouths, complaining about waste, fraud, and abuse. Even citizens who know that wise investments in advance of a disaster know that it's a nearly impossible task to overcome the really vocal opposition.