I teach emergency management courses including Intro to Emergency Management, Vulnerable Populations in Disaster, and the Political and Legal Foundations of Emergency Management. Every semester I incorporate current disasters into the classroom and COVID-19 is obviously no exception. There is a lot of news flying at us all very fast. It’s nearly impossible to keep up. So, in an effort to help my students make connections between course work and the current pandemic I’ve begun to curate a weekly list of news articles for them to read. My focus is primarily on articles related specifically to emergency management given the subject of my courses.
I’ve decided to make these curated lists public because I suspect emergency management practitioners and others are also struggling to keep up with the rapidly unfolding response.
There are many more good articles out there raising important issues than I can read or include here but this is at least an attempt to narrow down what the key issues are as we move forward in this long-term response.
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This week’s round of articles mostly fall into three categories: articles specifically about emergency management, the disproportionate impacts in communities of color, and the absence of a plan for how to move forward in the response and the recovery. All three are of great importance for emergency management.
E&E News: Disaster agency foresaw killer virus months before COVID-19
As you know from class emergency management agencies do risk assessments. FEMA does this too, of course. This past summer they released their THIRA which listed a pandemic as a likely catastrophic scenario in the United States.
Emergency Managers: Who are they and how are they helping with COVID-19?
This is a really excellent first-hand account of what emergency managers are doing right now to respond to the pandemic.
How COVID-19 will change Emergency Management Forever
This post includes a number of important observations on the way that this unprecedented response will impact emergency managers and emergency management long into the future.
This article parses out some of the ways that coronavirus will make fighting wildfires particularly difficult.
The question on everyone’s minds is, “when can I leave my house”? This article lays out the things we need to do.
New York Magazine: There Is No Plan for the End of the Coronavirus Crisis
Even though we’ve got a good list from experts about what we need to do to be able to lift restrictions there is currently no plan for how to actually implement these tasks (e.g., widespread testing). From an emergency management perspective, not having a plan is deeply unorthodox. As you know, during a response we use existing plans and adjust as needed. While this is happening locally, to an extent, it is not happening within the federal government. It’s leaving us a bit in response-limbo. This is a good (albeit slightly dramatic) article that outlines some of the key issues.
Earther: I’m a disaster scientist. Here’s why we need to think about Coronavirus recovery now
Relatedly, we don’t at all have a plan for the recovery from this pandemic. While less unusual than not having a response plan, it is deeply concerning from and emergency management perspective.
Washington Post: A plan to defeat coronavirus finally emerges, but it’s not from the White House
There are a number of proposals from various experts around the country about how we could implement widespread testing around the country. We’ll have to see if government, at any level, uses these ideas.
Washington Post: New Zealand isn’t just flattening the curve. It’s squashing it.
It’s useful to consider how other countries have approached response. Here’s one example – New Zealand.
Wired: The Asian Countries That Beat Covid-19 Have to Do It Again
We’ve been focusing on “flatting THE curve” but it’s worth remembering that depending on our strategy moving forward there are likely to be multiple curves.
The Undefeated: In 1918 and 2020, race colors America’s response to epidemics
This article does an excellent job of contextualizing the role of race in both a historic and current context.
Wired: The History of Pandemics Teaches Us Only That We Can't Be Taught
It’s always important to contextualize our current responses in historical responses as we do often in class. Here’s a bit of a history less related to this pandemic.
This article breaks down the death toll data in Chicago by race and shows a striking disparity. Similar statistics were found in both Detroit and Lousiana.
FiveThirtyEight: New York’s inequalities are fueling COVID-19
This article explores some of the factors related to inequality that is leading to disproportionate impacts throughout New York.
Grist: Coronavirus myth-busting: The truth about empty shelves and toilet paper shortages
I believe I shared a similar article last week, but this does a good job going point by point to explain the issues with food supply chains across the country.