Improving Pandemic Preparedness PDF Download

Author: Thomas Bollyky
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations Press
ISBN: 9780876092644
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
The United States and the world were unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, despite decades of warnings highlighting the inevitability of global pandemics and the need for international coordination. The failure to prioritize and adequately fund preparedness and effectively implement response plans has exacted a heavy human and economic price, and the crisis is not yet over. Emerging and reemerging infectious diseases are a threat to global and national security that neither the United States nor the world can afford to ignore. This Task Force proposes a comprehensive strategy that includes institutional reforms and policy innovations to help the United States and the multilateral system perform better in this crisis and when the next one emerges. Without increased U.S. leadership on and adequate investment in pandemic preparedness and response, the United States and the world will remain unnecessarily vulnerable to epidemic threats. The Council on Foreign Relations sponsors Independent Task Forces to assess issues of current and critical importance to U.S. foreign policy and provide policymakers with concrete judgments and recommendations. Diverse in backgrounds and perspectives, Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy through private deliberations. Once launched, Task Forces are independent of CFR and are solely responsible for the content of their reports. Task Force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation. Each Task Force member also has the option of putting forward an additional or a dissenting view.

Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593534492
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Governments, businesses, and individuals around the world are thinking about what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic. Can we hope to not only ward off another COVID-like disaster but also eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu? Bill Gates, one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists, believes the answer is yes. The author of the #1 New York Times best seller How to Avoid a Climate Disaster lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another catastrophe like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world’s foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, Gates first helps us understand the science of infectious diseases. Then he shows us how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, how we can prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy. Here is a clarion call—strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance.

Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309095042
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.

Author: Richard Horton
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509546456
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest science policy failure in a generation. We knew this was coming. Warnings about the threat of a new pandemic have been made repeatedly since the 1980s and it was clear in January that a dangerous new virus was causing a devastating human tragedy in China. And yet the world ignored the warnings. Why? In this short and hard-hitting book, Richard Horton, editor of the medical journal The Lancet, scrutinizes the actions that governments around the world took – and failed to take – as the virus spread from its origins in Wuhan to the global pandemic that it is today. He shows that many Western governments and their scientific advisors made assumptions about the virus and its lethality that turned out to be mistaken. Valuable time was lost while the virus spread unchecked, leaving health systems unprepared for the avalanche of infections that followed. Drawing on his own scientific and medical expertise, Horton outlines the measures that need to be put in place, at both national and international levels, to prevent this kind of catastrophe from happening again. Were supposed to be living in an era where human beings have become the dominant influence on the environment, but COVID-19 has revealed the fragility of our societies and the speed with which our systems can come crashing down. We need to learn the lessons of this pandemic and we need to learn them fast because the next pandemic may arrive sooner than we think.

Author: Gina Kolata
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429979356
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Veteran journalist Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It presents a fascinating look at true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it.

Author: Lawrence Wright
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593081145
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—a riveting thriller and “all-too-convincing chronicle of science, espionage, action and speculation” (The Wall Street Journal). At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When epidemiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will have staggering repercussions. Halfway across the globe, the deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security scrambles to mount a response to the rapidly spreading pandemic leapfrogging around the world, which she believes may be the result of an act of biowarfare. And a rogue experimenter in man-made diseases is preparing his own terrifying solution. As already-fraying global relations begin to snap, the virus slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions and decimating the population. With his own wife and children facing diminishing odds of survival, Henry travels from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to his home base at the CDC in Atlanta, searching for a cure and for the origins of this seemingly unknowable disease. The End of October is a one-of-a-kind thriller steeped in real-life political and scientific implications, filled with the insight that has been the hallmark of Wright’s acclaimed nonfiction and the full-tilt narrative suspense that only the best fiction can offer.

Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393881563
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19. The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work. Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.

Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309107695
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
In recent public workshops and working group meetings, the Forum on Microbial Threats of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has examined a variety of infectious disease outbreaks with pandemic potential, including those caused by influenza (IOM, 2005) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (IOM, 2004). Particular attention has been paid to the potential pandemic threat posed by the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which is now endemic in many Southeast Asian bird populations. Since 2003, the H5N1 subtype of avian influenza has caused 185 confirmed human deaths in 11 countries, including some cases of viral transmission from human to human (WHO, 2007). But as worrisome as these developments are, at least they are caused by known pathogens. The next pandemic could well be caused by the emergence of a microbe that is still unknown, much as happened in the 1980s with the emergence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and in 2003 with the appearance of the SARS coronavirus. Previous Forum meetings on pandemic disease have discussed the scientific and logistical challenges associated with pandemic disease recognition, identification, and response. Participants in these earlier meetings also recognized the difficulty of implementing disease control strategies effectively. Ethical and Legal Considerations in Mitigating Pandemic Disease: Workshop Summary as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop.

Author: National Security Council
Publisher: Nimble Books
ISBN: 9781608881864
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
In March 2020 POLITICO reported that after the Ebola outbreak in 2014, the Obama Administration's National Security Council had prepared a detailed, thorough "pandemic playbook" that was available to Trump administration officials, who treated it dismissively and did not draw on it during the response to the coronavirus. The leaked 69-page PowerPoint is reproduced in full color in durable hardcover landscape format, a crucial resource for understanding the Trump administration's response to COVID-19. The Playbook describes itself as follows: "a decision-making tool that identifies: (1) questions to ask; (2) agency counterparts to consult for answers to each; and (3) key decisions which may require deliberation through the Presidential Policy Directive (PPD)-1 process or its successor National Security Council process." This is a document with an optimistic view of its role in the world. It is not clear that policy leaders in any Administration are actually interested in outsourcing their decision-making to a tool developed by a previous admninistration. To the contrary, policy-makers typically place a great deal of emphasis on getting their own people in place to ask the right questions. The main body of the Playbook is comprised of two major sections, one for international events that have not yet reached the US and one for events with a US locus. For each, a "Rubric" is provided that "is not intended to serve as a comprehensive concept of operations or replace national or pre-existing U.S. Government response structures, but rather to serve as a proposed guide based on existing authorities, guidance, and response frameworks for staff monitoring emerging infectious disease threats and interagency planning and response, should the need arise in the future." The key words are "for staff monitoring emerging infectious disease threats..." -- in other words, this document was intended for use by staff who are monitoring things, rather than for policy makers who are deciding them. The Rubrics explicitly spell out key assumptions--for example, on the domestic side that "the U.S. Government will use all powers at its disposal to prevent, slow, or mitigate the spread of an emerging infectious disease threat..." The drafters did not include any language such as "unless it might hurt the stock market." Both Rubrics contain exhaustive lists of important questions and decisions that correspond well with what we know now to have been important in the response to COVID-19. An Appendix contains several useful resources, including a laundrty list of "declarations and mitigation options" -- things that the US government or other agencies can declare and do, specifically including pharmaceutical, medical, travel-related and community interventions. Some of the latter will seem remarkably familiar: a. Voluntary home isolation of the ill and home quarantine of the exposed b. Dismissal of students from schools c. Social distancing measures, such as telework d. Cancellation of large public gatherings; and e. Widespread use of personal protective devices A section on Communications envisages the Secretary of HHS as the primary spokesperson. No mention is made of daily 5 pm press conferences with the President. Readers who enjoy works like THE GREAT INFLUENZA, CONTAGION, and THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN will find this a fascinating look behind the curtain. Also an ideal gift for that "no masks" relative who just will not read the peer-reviewed science that you patiently email to them!

Author: Selen Kars-Ünlüoğlu
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311076735X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Leaderly acts and practices from unexpected places are often overlooked and yet have remarkable power. These spontaneous acts are in sharp contrast to those of formal leaders in governments and leading corporations. Global events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis light up these differences. This book delves deeper, exploring these leaderly acts and practices more fully and beyond extraordinary events. The authors describe these as "unleadership", a term defined in this book as a set of acts and practices that are undertaken in a spirit of spontaneity and generosity for social good. Four dimensions of unleadership are identified in this book: paying it forward, living with the unknown, catching the wave, and confident connecting and collaborating. Unleadership exposes the potential that is unleashed when members of the community discover their own power to act and reclaim what they have delegated to their leaders. Based on extensive research, the authors highlight the flourishing of alternative forms of leading that encourage rethinking ideas of leadership and followership. They provide practical guidance to organisations and practitioners for enriching their leaderly capacity and cultivating unleadership practices to co-exist with and complement leadership practices. Unleadership is an invaluable resource for leaders and managers in public and private organisations as well as students of leadership and organisational development.