Glenden BrownInfluenza Pandemic of 1918 and what we have to learn from it
Do we have anything to learn from a 90 year old pandemic?
A first wave influenza swept the world in March 1918. A second, more deadly wave hit in the fall - from September to November. Finally, a third wave hit the world in early 1919. An exact death toll is unknowable but it could be as high as 100 million people. Death toll in the US alone was between 500 and 700 thousand people. A comparable death toll today would be 1.5 to 2.1 million dead in under twelve months.
Scientifically, the Spanish Flu (as it was known) remains a mystery. What caused its unique virulence and ferocity? Why did it kill the least likely (those between 20 and 40)? Where did it come from and where did it go? Most flu epidemics since 1918 have been variations on the 1918 virus. In The Great Influenza John Barry discusses the normal cycle of viruses - they infect a new population and begin to mutate, becoming significantly more deadly than their original form, then “drifting” into less deadly forms. As Barry points out, the 1918 influenza followed this pattern - the initial infection in spring 1918 was characterized by unique symptoms that at first convinced the medical community it wasn’t the flu (and was likely passed from swine to humans). By fall, the virus mutated to become more deadly - significantly more so than the regular flu. It then mutated again and in the third wave was more dangerous than regular flu but far less so than its previous incarnations. In her book, Gina Kolata disagrees with Barry and asserts the 1918 Influenza was a variation of an existing, human borne virus that for unknown reasons mutated. Barry traces the epidemic source to Kansas, then spread by American soldiers worldwide. Kolata disagrees with this epidemiological pattern and argues the virus - latent in people from an earlier pandemic - mutated in the conditions created by the war (crowding, people from vastly different parts of the world thrown together, and just plain viral bad luck).
What made the 1918 virus so horrific was the ferocity and speed with which it struck. Barry relates stories of peopel who felt fine at 9 a.m. and who were dead by bedtime. The disease was also horrifically debilitating - delerium, fatique, pain, fever and difficulty breathing. Cyanosis affected victims - turning their faces blue and purple. It was such an awful death that people actually remembered it as the Black Death - yes, that black death from the middle ages.
Weirdly, the 1918 pandemic is rarely discussed. Most US history classes gloss over if they mention it at all. In military bases nationwide - flooded with draftees and recruits to fight the war - it wasn’t uncommon for 30, 40 or 50 percent of the men to contract the disease. It was so widespread, it effected mobilization for the war. American troop transports became floating hosptials and coffins.
Whatever else you might say about Woodrow Wilson, he knew how to create a propaganda machine and it was brutally effective. Geared with mindnumbing focus on “morale” the US media refused to report anything that might damage morale - like millions ill and tens of thousands dying. The media - not to put too fine a point on it - underrepored, misreported and outright lied about the flu; in some major cities, the dailies didn’t carry stories about the flu and when they did, they reported with such rose colored glasses that it was impossible to take them seriously. The government - when it bothered to acknowledge what was happening - usually gave such patently bad advice that people simply refused to listen. The combination was, quite literally, deadly. In one particularly horrific instance, the city of Philadelphia - as the disease ws cresting - held a major parade with hundreds of thousands in attendance; after assuring people there was no risk, tens of thousands of people fell desperately ill. At the Federal level, the military actually ignored the advice of its own experts and kept transporting sick men from one base to another, spreading the disease even further.
But what does a 90 year old plague have to teach us today?
The answer: So very much.
First, and perhaps most importantly, you can’t create an effective public health service in the midst of a crisis. New York had, at the time, one of the world’s finest public health departments. They responded powerfully and quickly and were able to produce some positive results. By contrast, Philadelphia’s public health agency was part of the patronage system and was a public health agency in name only. When the crisis hit, they simply were not capable of any kind of response beyond paralysis. The question of course is not “Will we have some sort epidemic?” but “When will we have it?” and will we be prepared. In the face of the pandemic, private institutions (aside from the Red Cross) simply collapsed. In general government agencies didn’t fare much better - but where they succeeded they had experience with previous TB, polio or other viral outbreaks and applied that knowledge. Professionals - doctors, nurses, scientists - not only worked through the crisis but stepped up when needed; their communities benefitted from their training and professionalism. We need a standing, professional public health service (one staffed and managed by actual experts in public health, including doctors, nurses and scientists) with prepared contingency plans and the authority to declare an emergency and act to manage it.
Second, government and media have an obligation to provide accurate, timely inforamtion, even if the news is bad . The failure of the media and the government to provide accurate information made the situation significantly worse. People could look out their windows and see that the news reports were false and so they ignored them. As a result, when government agencies actually made useful, accurate reports, people didn’t trust them. The resulting breakdown in communcation made it more likely that people believed all kinds of rumors, lies,distortions and increased the public’s desparation.
Third, we need to protect the integrity and professionalism of civil servants. If the public knows its health services are run by professionals and that their communications are trustworthy, we can trust what we hear from our government. The Bush Administration’s staffing of so many civil service agencies with political hacks (Monica Goodling anyone?) degrades the civil service’s professionalism and public trust in those agencies. Civil servants need to be free to pursue with absolute professionalism their jobs. Protecting the integrity of the civil service protects the public. Politicizing agencies and treating them as patronage machines damages the public good.
Fourth, you can’t just have a public health plan, you need an emergency plan to help communities help themselves. Even if you have done all the prep work, a major public health crisis is going to be a mess. A similar death toll to 1918 would mean, conservatively, 1.5 million additional deaths in less than year, with a majority of those occurring in a very narrow time frame (most influenza deaths occurred from September to November, 1918). Services, facilities and people will be overwhelmed. In 1918, there were simply not enough doctors and nurses to go around and a large proportion of the sick never saw a medical professional. Community ties frayed and broke. Once that happened, there was no where to turn, no where to go. Families locked themselves in their houses to die. Part of civic planning needs to include identifying civic leaders who can mobilize the community to provide basic care.
These recommendations point directly to the need for well organized, well run, honest government, capable of acting when it needs to. The great lie of modern conservatism is the lie that not only shoud private institutions do things, but that government cannot be trusted to do things right. It is our government and we the people have the right to expect our government to be competent, responsive and responsible. Relying on the government to lead in a crisis isn’t asking for some sort of nanny state, it is expecting the government to be what it should - the caretaker of the common good.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Excellent post. The 1918 pandemic gets written about now and then, but because the witnesses are almost all gone it’s disappearing from memory.
Hurricane Katrina taught us that government agencies may be very good at scaring people with color-coded terror alerts, but under the Bush administration they are unprepared to deal with a real catastrophe. We need our government back.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Richard - thank you.
I sometimes think the 1918 pandemic isn’t written about much today because even then it wasn’t much written about. The horrors of the pandemic were simply too much for people to face. Once it disappeared - almost as quickly as it appeared - people just wanted to put it behind them. Katharine Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider is one of the few contemporary fictional accounts of the experience.
If you look at Katrina, you see what happens when you put political hacks in charge of gov’t agencies.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Google “antibiotic resistance” and you will find some scary stuff. Stephen King called the book The Hot Zone about the Ebola virus “one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read.” Katrina indeed showed us that agencies we thought we could count on to protect us might fail badly in a crisis.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
No, Richard. We need to learn that when the chips are down, relying on others to save you is suicide. In addition, indoctrinating people to believe that only the Government can help them in times of crisis is tantamount to murder.
June 9th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
jdberger offers the solution: Disaster Capitalism. If you’re rich enough, you can pay for a private-enterprise rescue. Check out Naomi Klein’s article: Rapture Rescue 911: Disaster Response for the Chosen.
What about the other 95 percent of Americans? They’re the fools hoping for government help. Ain’t democracy great?
June 10th, 2008 at 8:37 am
There is a scene in the novel Jennifer Government (about an all-capitalist future world) where the 911 operator demands a credit card number before responding.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:55 am
JD - in some sense what you’re talking about is the ideology of rugged individualism - rely on your own resources, you don’t need anyone else. It’s an appealing, even seductive idea, but history has shown it is simply not true. We did once rely on private agencies and personal resources to manage it a crisis. It was called the Great Depression.
When I recommend creating effective government agencies, it’s not because I’m in love with government, it’s because a quick survey shows that private institutions and resources have never been equal to the job and the government alone possesses the resources and perspective to manage a crisis. Katrina was result of intentional government policies - policies designed to fail. Bush appointed a man with no disaster management experience (or interest in learnign about it) to run an agency tasked with managing disasters (you can see this pattern throughout Bush administration and conservative movement in general). Monica Goodling - a graduate of a 11th rate law school - was in charge of reviewing the work of career attorneys who had forgotten more about the law than she ever knew. Goodling (one of the people at the center of the justice dept. scandal) was so far in over her head that there was no hope she could do the job she was supposed to do; so she applied political standards to reviewing the work of justice dept attorneys. Of course she has was an abject failure. For lack of a better term, that is governmental malpractice.
Why does this matter? In a crisis, say a hurricane or earthquake, the local agencies are going to be under water or incapacitated. We need outside agencies to come in and help. We can’t rely on our own resources for the simple reason that a natural disaster wipes out our own resources. If your house floods and you have a food storage in the basement and your food storage is flooded you don’t have resources anymore. Should we let you starve? I say no.
The lesson isn’t that government can’t do these jobs, but that the government needs to be run by professionals, who care about the area in which they work. We need to hold government accountable to use its resources in responsible ways. Yes, we have a right to be outraged when the government is wasteful and inefficient, but the answer is not to close the government but to insist on reforms to make it effective and efficient.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Glenden,
Can you name a government program or office that has remained at the same level of scope or responsibility since it’s creation?
The rugged individualism has to be the core of our philosophy otherwise we get people dependent upon others without the means, initiative and willingness to prepare for anything more than a party.
Thousands of years of history had occurred before the Great Depression with people relying not just on themselves but their friends, families, neighbors and religions successfully without government intervention. The measures taken during the Great Depression were supposed to be temporary, not permanent income sources.
Managing crisis is what a government should do, but who are the first responders to a crisis? Shouldn’t it be the people involved? The job of everyone to be prepared is not difficult, Katrina showed that in abundance. Thousands of people prepared for what was to come, took appropriate steps prior to the hurricane’s arrival, planned for what to do after and executed their plans–all without government intervention. Amazing.
You asked flooding and food storage…first that shows individual initiative in having food storage. If I have a basement, shouldn’t I plan for the possibility of it flooding if I live in a flood plain or a city that’s below water? Yes, there is that rugged individualism again. Then the next level of response should be friends, families and neighbors. I have neighbors that are elderly and have difficulties; guess what? We’ve talked about what to do in an emergency and it includes getting them out. People have friends and family to help feed them in the short term.
The local government response and planning should include what to do in case of emergency. Do you remember seeing the pictures of the flooded school buses in New Orleans? Those buses should have been used to evacuate the citizens, but New Orleans didn’t even follow their own prepared evacuation plan. Who should have been responsible for making sure that plan worked right, the feds or the local citizens?
How about the state level? Then the federal. No one is saying don’t have appropriate responses to a crisis? But for goodness sakes, let’s not have people standing around complaining the government didn’t pick them up on their door steps and delivery them to a new house.
Research the statistics on emergency room visits, find out how many people don’t try to treat themselves before going to there for minor issues. How many people want to live on their own instead of living with family but are willing to draw housing assistance?
Katrina was a failure on so many levels, but at the core of it was the individual response to the problem. How do we get people standing on their own again instead of depending on the government. Isn’t that the purpose of assistance to help people stand again?
June 10th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Answer: The United States Patent & Trademark Office.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Bob -
Of course government programs change in scope. The society they serve changes. Medicare, for instance, did not originally cover prescription medications - at the time it was created, they were a small portion of medical costs. As medical technology changed, medication became a larger portion of the cost. So the program had to change. Now, as written by and for the pharmaceutical industry, Part D is bad legislation, but we shouldnt’ demand it be rescinded, we should demand it be reformed.
Bob, people did not successfully rely on one another and their churches in the past. If something horrific happened, most people just suffered and died. Again and again in history, we read of natural disasters or wars in which people could have been saved and weren’t. The Red Cross - perhaps the most effective private service agency in the world - was created precisely because of that suffering. The Red Cross, for all the good it does, is not sufficient to meet the needs of the suffering during a natural disaster. Pretending that people were just sitting around waiting to be carried to safety is an insulting dog whistle racist talking point. Many of those who didn’t drive themselves to safety weren’t able to - the poor, the elderly, the sick were abandoned in the 9th ward. They didn’t stay because they were waiting for some limo to pick them up, they stayed because they couldn’t get away on their own. The magnitude of the disaster overwhelmed local and state resources and the federal agency charged with picking up the pieces was run by a man who know how to plan a horse race.
The evidence does not support your assertion that a strong social safety net breeds laziness. Denmark, for instance, has a comprehensive social safety net and lower unemployment than the US. Danes know that if they lose their jobs, they can get retraining, they can still get affordable medical care. Such programs haven’t created an idle society; they have created a secure one.
As a society, we have a valid investment in caring for one another - not just the neighbor we know, but the neighbor we don’t know and never see. When the big earthquake hits Utah, I damn well want a strong, well run FEMA ready to help us pick up the pieces. And they can’t assemble that agency the day the disaster hits. To have that agency in place when I need it means having plans in place now, having an agency in place now. We may never need FEMA in Salt Lake in my lifetime, but knowing they exist, are well run and well staffed and ready if we need them creates a measure of security that allows me to lead my life. Healthcare, for example: If I know I won’t lose my health insurance, maybe I’m more likely to take a risk and start my own company. By creating a sink or swim society, we actually make it harder be innovative, to take chances.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Glenden,
I’m not arguing that there shouldn’t be federal agencies. On the contrary, like you I’m arguing they should be effective. I’m also not talking about a sink or swim society.
I am talking about the basic day to day responsibility for life. This is where America is failing. By removing the accountability of individuals and sheltering them from the consequences of the bad choices made.
Out of work, unemployment insurance is a stop gap….but how long should it last? 6 months, a year? Housing assistance, food stamps? How long should those that produce pay for those unwilling to produce? I’m not talking temporary assistance, I’m talking long term welfare and assistance lasting years for those able to work.
The sick, the elderly, the poor didn’t stay in the 9th ward because they couldn’t get out. They stayed because no one said- you are responsible for your life–make sure you can get out or make sure the LOCAL government is following its plan. There was a story of a 15 or 16 year old boy that stole a school bus and drove his family and some neighbors to Houston—because he saw that city wasn’t doing what it should have. He took responsibility for himself and his family.
Who is responsible for your life or my life? We are, not the city, county, state, or country. I expect those agencies to do what I pay them to do, manage the events that affect the same level. But it starts with the individual, that’s all I’m saying.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Bob, Talk about responsibility? You have a responsibility to stop rolling over and playing dead. The war is illegal. The American people know it. The top military brass know it. MOST of the soldiers know it. And the entire world knows it.
And yet you sit there and boast about your decision to let you son particpate in this criminal act when you should be protesting.
You are the worse kind of American.
btw: I did not suggest you SAID you are a tribal loyalist. I DECIDED you are one.
In the real world, you are not ONLY what YOU decide you are. You ARE also what you do NOT do.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Cliff,
If the war is illegal, prosecute them. Bring charges, impeachment proceedings. Just because you insist that in “your reality” something is true, doesn’t make it so. Take it to the courts.
I give your opinion of me as much consideration as a I give a gnat’s fart.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I’m not advocating a “sink or swim” society. I simply request that people exercise a little personal responsibility.
Have a fire extinguisher.
First aid kit (3 Band-aids and a tube of Bacitrin don’t count).
Food for 3 days.
Water for 3 days (or know where to get it).
Clothing for 3 days.
In the area where I live, we know to expect natural disasters. We’re encouraged and reminded on a regular basis to keep 3 days of supplies by local government and the media. They realize that help might not be able to get to us for at least 3 days.
This isn’t “rugged individualism”. It’s common sense.
Regarding people who waited around to be rescued, that’s not racist. There were plenty of white folks who decided to stick it out and were flooded out. By asserting that the observation is racist, you excuse their behaviour. You enable their stupidity. You absolve them of their dumb decisions — and I’m not referring to the immobile, elderly or sick.
In contrast, take a look at some of the heroes in New Orleans. They anticipated the hurricane, stocked their homes, made sure that they had supplies - and when the winds died down, ventured out to assist other members of their communities. They didn’t wait for someone to tell them what to do - they took initiative.
So, here’s my post again:
How hard is it to buy an extra can of beans at the store? How difficult is it to buy and store an extra pound of rice? What does a bottle of iodine cost? You can buy all these things with the change you find in your couch.
Stop making excuses for people.
–
Albert - GREAT ANSWER.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:59 am
jdberger, when a major U.S. city is virtually wiped out, I think everyone ought to agree it’s a national crisis. The reason we have a federal government is to protect the nation.
The Bush administration abandoned New Orleans and the smaller cities affected by Hurricane Katrina. Donald Rumsfeld haughtily dismissed the very idea of trying to help, saying “the Department of Defense is not a first responder.” Never mind that the Navy had ships standing by. The U.S. Coast Guard rescued more than 33,000 people while Rumsfeld dithered.
You think there will be help in three days? Not from a Republican government. FEMA took two weeks to get to St. Bernard Parish, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were there first!
June 10th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Well then, Richard. Looks like I better stock up on beans butter and bullets. And band-aids, of course.
Just curious, when this disaster happened, where was the Mayor? The police? Fire departments?
June 10th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Richard,
What is wrong with Rumsfield telling the absolute truth?
We never said nor disagree with the statement of a city being wiped out being a national crisis! But there are rules in place to keep the government from overreaching.
Link
The Department of Defense IS NOT and should not be a first responder. Who should? City officials, maybe having cops that kept order instead of abandoning their jobs or looting?
How about city officials that should have provisions stocked and ready but didn’t?
Geesh, the people that complain Bush is acting like a dictator wants the same administration to take on the job of a city and state government.
No one is saying the federal government shouldn’t respond, but the first people to respond should be the local, county, state authorities; then the federal government.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Albert,
It is a great answer and it should be the example of how the federal government operates.
Strictly within it’s chartered and constitutionally defined responsibilities; nothing more, nothing less.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Bob - some of what I think you’re saying is challenging people to be good citizens - to not be afraid to hold government accountable for being prepared, for doing its job. I agree we need to do that. For instance, I attended a city council meeting a a few weeks back - I expected it to be jam packed. There were maybe 20 people (I was quoted in the newspaper for my public remarks and I’m sure that’s gonna bite me in the butt - I wasn’t exactly circumspect in my remarks). People need to be more involved, more active in the community. I agree with that.
I’m reluctant to start telling people it’s their fault for not being more self reliant. For a huge number of people, just getting by day by day takes every bit of energy they have. I was told by someone working at Crossroads that the average poor person in Utah works an average of 60 hours per week - most of the poor in Utah are working poor. Someone working 60 hours per week, trying to raise a family really has no time or energy to plan for contingencies.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
jd, where were you in August-September 2005? The local governments were overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster, the National Guard was mostly in Iraq. In New Orleans the Guard armories were under water.
Bob S., the Coast Guard was there right away. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force helicopters sat on the ground waiting for orders that finally came days later– after Katrina became a political problem for Bush.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I also think it’s important to come back to a point I made before - in a major crisis, local resources are going to be overwhelmed, if not wiped out completely. Expecting your local police force to respond to a crisis when their station is in ruins and their cars aren’t working and their radios are down is asking a bit much. They’ll be professional and they’ll do what they can but within 24 hours, they need back up from outside the community. Same goes for fire and ambulance services.
June 10th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Richard, what branch of government is the Coast Guard part of?
Is that a State or Federal agency?
Do the answers to the above give lie to your assertion that the Federal Government did nothing in the early stages?
Also, since you claim to have some military experience, surely you know that logistics get tangled and the government rarely does anything quickly. Does “Hurry up and wait” ring a bell.
Or is this another episode of Bush Derangement Syndrome?
June 10th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Glenden,
We are in agreement on much of what needs to be done but for the working poor it is even more imperative that they be told to prepared. The working poor at the ones most on the edge. Will it be easy for them, no but they are the ones that most need to have food supplies on hand and first aid ready. Most of us can go a week or two without income, it would hurt but not devastate us. The working poor are the ones who most need to prepare for power to be out 3 days or more, for their jobs to be unavailable for 3 weeks after a disaster.
Heck, it is tough for us to prepare but I recognize the need because I know the response may be slowed. Here is the other aspect of it, my responsibility. I don’t want to take up government resources that are needed for others less fortunate. It’s that individualism again, if I’m prepared to help myself I can spend my time helping my neighbors and community.
The ones that take their responsibilities seriously weren’t the problem in Katrina.
Here is great link to some of the popular Katrina myths.
Whose responsibility is it to plan for evacuating the hospitals and nursing homes? The president or the city and state government?
Richard, as far as the National Guard; that is another myth
Did the number of troops deployed affect operations, yes but the state government should have planned for that, right? Also there were other states that weren’t affected that supplied troops.
Also, it wasn’t the total management failure the media made it out to be. For sure there were mistakes and issues, but:
Glenden, I’m not talking about the working poor not being assisted, I’m talking about people like this that can’t stop taking government assistance
Nearly 3 years after Katrina!!
Or this example from the same article
.
When does it stop becoming a hand up and start becoming a permanent crutch?
June 10th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
jd, I thought everyone knew that the U.S. Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security. But they couldn’t do it all on their own due to the scale of the disaster– the Department of Defense initially sat around because of Bush/Rumsfeld.
As you may know, President Bush and the Bushies ignored the crisis that everyone else in the country was watching on CNN. I knew the levees had broken before “heckuva job Brownie” and Michael Chertoff did. That’s pure incompetence.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
You had to look it up, didn’t you, Richard. Admit it….
So, Richard, you’re admitting that the Fed did respond to Katrina. You’re admitting that you were lying (or you “misspoke”) before when you said that they didn’t. Yes?
And those Florida Nat’l Guard folks, they weren’t part of the Federal Response, either, were they?
Nope….nothing to see here
Yes. The Federal response to Katrina was lacking. But it wasn’t by any stretch completely absent - and that’s what you’ve been arguing.
And since I’ve tossed you that small bone, why don’t you admit that those poor folks who didn’t evacuate would have been much better off if they’d been a little less dependent upon the government to rescue them?
June 10th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
jd:
I hope that you are never in a situation where you need assistance from some government agency! My experience tells me that those screaming loudly about assistance to others are the first to cry foul - and loudly, too - when they themselves are on the needy end and need is not quick to arrive.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Albert - you deliberately are misconstruing my point - and you know it.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
jd– you are absolutely right. The poor residents of New Orleans would have been better off if they weren’t poor. If they could afford cars and had money to pay for hotels, they could have evacuated along with the rich people.
Marie Antoinette must have been a Republican. Let ‘em eat cake!
The reason I brought up the stellar efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard (for which they received a Presidential unit citation) is to refute the lame contention that the federal government’s hands were tied absent a formal request from Louisiana and Mississippi. The Coast Guard commanders believed that a freaking hurricane that took out a major city was all the authorization they needed!
June 10th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Richard,
This is getting old. The poor got out of the city for the most part if they wanted. The failures in the evacuation were related to Nagin calling for only a voluntary evacuation for the longest time, not following their own evacuation plan, then finally not enforcing the mandatory evacuation notice. Wealth had nothing to do with it
MYTH: “The failure to evacuate was the tipping point for all the other things that … went wrong.”–Michael Brown, former FEMA director, Sept. 27, 2005
REALITY: When Nagin issued his voluntary evacuation order, a contraflow plan that turned inbound interstate lanes into outbound lanes enabled 1.2 million people to leave New Orleans out of a metro population of 1.5 million. “The Corps estimated we would need 72 hours [to evacuate that many people],” says Brian Wolshon, an LSU civil engineer. “Instead, it took 38 hours.” Later investigations indicated that many who stayed did so by choice. “Most people had transportation,” says Col. Joe Spraggins, director of emergency management in Harrison County, Ala. “Many didn’t want to leave.”
Even if the “poor” didn’t have the finances, shouldn’t they have taken the responsibility to have the city follow its own evacuation plan?
This was a problem that was known and recognized long before Katrina….it was part of the city’s planning
If you are one of the people that can’t afford to evacuate on your own, shouldn’t you know the city’s plan to get you out? Shouldn’t you be asking the questions why it isn’t being followed? Demanding to be evacuated using the established plans.
I’m not sure on the exact laws and statutes for the Coast Guard, but the use of the military has specifics rules, regulations and laws governing it.
Are you advocating the President act in a manner contrary to the law?
June 10th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Bob:
I am curious. Is there anything you can think of that Bush just totally screwed up? My gosh, you are fully behind the administration’s response to Katrina and decision to invade Iraq; notwithstanding, however, overwhelming evidence suggesting that the administration bungled (to put it mildly) both matters. Is there anything you can think of that Bush just plain fucked up?
June 10th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Albert,
I think there are things that Bush bungled, the management of the war, the continued response to Katrina, the budget/deficit.
What gets me is the extreme Bush Derangement Syndrome shown….the initial response to Katrina was bungled by Nagin, Blanco, the city and state governments. This is ironic because rarely have I heard anyone on this site (maybe never) say they bungled anything. Possible reason, could it be their Democrat Party affiliation?
The war was authorized by who? Could it be, Congress? Do I hear that the Democrats who authorized the war being pilloried like Bush? Nope. Just Bush and the “neocon” republicans.
The job of running the country is spread among 2, count them 2 branches of the government. But from what I see here, only Bush ever does anything and everything he does is wrong.
How about it Albert?
Care to say whether or not that Nagin screwed up on Katrina?
That Blanco screwed up on Katrina?
That Congress screwed up on authorizing the war? and continues, if you feel it’s wrong, to screw up by funding it?
Do I think that Iraq should have been invaded? Given everything KNOWN at the time (known, not just believed or unconfirmed) and the situation at the time, Yes.
Do I think the government response to Katrina could have been better? Yes, but the primary responsibilities lie with the city and state government.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Congress authorized Bush to go to war based on cherry-picked intel! Regardless, it was Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and, as Bush himself has stated, “the busk stops here.”
Tell you what. I’ll take a fresh look at Nagin/Blanco if you take a fresh look at BushCo.