Flu Plan

The White House is preparing to release its plan to counter a flu pandemic. At a scant 240 pages, I'm guessing that it is pretty light on details. It's probably more of a outline to let government agencies know what they should plan to do.

Suffice to say, it's good first step. But without extensive "war gaming" of individual agencies, what the GAO fears is exactly what will happen. From the Washington Post:

"Our biggest concern is whether an agency has a clear idea of what it absolutely has to do, no matter what," said Linda Koontz, director of information management issues at the GAO. "Some had three and some had 400 essential functions. We raised questions about whether 400 were really essential."

In several cases, agencies never trained for or rehearsed emergency plans, she said, causing concern that when disaster strikes, "people will be sitting there with a 500-page book in front of them."

That's probably exactly what will happen should the nation ever face another flu pandemic, unless the White House orders something akin to national disaster preparedness drills. Something I don't expect it to do. We'll see.