What Happens If We Have Another Pandemic or Big Disaster?

I was hoping for the last three years that we could get through the four years of the Trump administration without a major disaster, because it was clear from the beginning that the administration did not have the ability to handle anything that required a fast response or a national strategy based on sound planning. 

Unfortunately, we got hit with the worst pandemic in 100 years. And the Trump administration botched, and continues to botch, it's response. 

It could be worse. We could have another pandemic. Experts have been warning for years that we could face a pandemic flu if existing strains like H5N1 or H7N9 become transmissible between humans. Ed Yong, the wonderful writer for The Atlantic, had taken a look at this scenario. It's not easy reading.

A second virus would be especially devastating if it targeted a different slice of the populace than COVID-19. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, many respiratory viruses disproportionately affect children, and the 1918 flu pandemic was especially deadly for adults ages 20 to 40. “Something that decimates children or young people is a different ballgame,” says Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina and an Atlantic contributor. “It’d be economically devastating, and you’d no longer have an age group that’s protected.” The current debate about opening schools would be completely off the table. “In such a case, 1 plus 1 isn’t 2, but 10,” she adds.

It’s certainly possible for people to contract multiple respiratory viruses at once, and in early spring, some adults were indeed infected with both flu and SARS-CoV-2. But it’s hard to predict what happens when two severe pathogens hit the same person. Viruses reproduce by co-opting their host’s cells, and two of them might obstruct each other by competing for the same cellular machinery. It’s also possible that one would trigger a generic immune response, like inflammation, that would make it harder for the second to take hold. Then again, it’s also possible that two severe diseases would compound each other. “The knotty heart of all these problems is the immune system,”  Metcalf told me, which is so complicated that trying to understand it, much less predict it, “is just miserable.”

It's not just another pandemic that we should be worrying about. If the COVID-19 pandemic is not brought under control soon, hospital systems will crash. What happens if there's a major disaster, like a landfalling category 5 hurricane, a great earthquke follwed by a tsunami, or a nuclear power plant accident? Will the government's emergency systems and the medical system be able to cope?

For some ideas on that, see this Twitter thread from Dr. Samantha Montano, who has a Ph.D in emergency management. In part:

There is no shortage of potential disasters — the height of tornado season, wildfire risk on the west coast is nuts, spring flooding is sure to continue this year in the midwest, & hurricane season. It’d be just our luck for the earthquakes & volcanoes to feel left out.

 I don’t have a crystal ball. I can’t tell you what disaster will happen, where, or when but the possibility is very real and folks, especially key emergency management stakeholders need to be thinking about this (to be fair, I’ve talked to many who are!)

 I'm not saying this to freak you out -- just to point out that our other risks don't go away just because there is a pandemic.

She has helpfully shared another thread with resources for coping with emergencies.