DHS wound down pandemic models before coronavirus struck

[kpete]

A vital modeling program was sidelined amid a bureaucratic battle, former officials say, leaving U.S. less prepared to face the virus.

By DANIEL LIPPMAN

03/24/2020 08:47 PM EDT


The Department of Homeland Security stopped updating its annual models of the havoc that pandemics would wreak on America’s critical infrastructure in 2017, according to current and former DHS officials with direct knowledge of the matter.


From at least 2005 to 2017, an office inside DHS, in tandem with analysts and supercomputers at several national laboratories, produced detailed analyses of what would happen to everything from transportation systems to hospitals if a pandemic hit the United States.


But the work abruptly stopped in 2017 amid a bureaucratic dispute over its value, two of the former officials said, leaving the department flat-footed as it seeks to stay ahead of the impacts the COVID-19 outbreak is having on vast swathes of the U.S. economy. Officials at other agencies have requested some of the reports from the pandemic modeling unit at DHS in recent days, only to find the information they needed scattered or hard to find quickly.


One 2015 DHS report, based partly on data produced by NISAC, warned that America’s public and private health systems might “experience significant shortages in vaccines, antivirals, pharmaceuticals needed to treat secondary infections and complications, personal protective equipment (PPE), and medical equipment, including ventilators.”



MORE:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/24/dhs-pandemic-coronavirus-146884

Link to tweet

?s=20

[struggle4progress]

1. "Putin told us we didn't need these models"