FEMA Report Warned of Pandemic Vulnerability Months before COVID-19Posted in late July, the document foresaw many current impacts, including overwhelmed hospitals and disruptions in essential services
By Thomas Frank, E&E News on April 10, 2020
… The Federal Emergency Management Agency warned last year that a pandemic caused by a novel strain of influenza would cripple the country‘s response capabilities by driving millions of people into overwhelmed hospitals.
The report, which was written before the new coronavirus first surfaced in China, offered these prescient predictions: The deluge of patients would create “a shortage of medical supplies, equipment, beds, and healthcare workers.”
FEMA‘s warning, issued in July (2019), forecast with stunning accuracy the social, economic and personal devastation that the ongoing pandemic has caused. …