The GAO told the government in 2015 to develop a plan to protect the aviation system against an outb

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

The GAO told the government in 2015 to develop a plan to protect the aviation system against an outbreak. It never happened.

By Ian Duncan and Lori Aratani
March 25, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Even as the Ebola outbreak still raged in West Africa, congressional watchdogs began investigating how well-prepared U.S. airports and airlines were to deal with a rapidly spreading disease.

They found a patchwork of local plans and federal agencies pointing fingers at one another over who was responsible for knitting them all together. The investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the country needed one national plan — something that was required under U.N. aviation standards.

The Transportation Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed that such a plan was a good idea, but each said the other ought to be in charge of developing it.

Five years later, as the novel coronavirus takes hold in the United States, those disputes have been left largely unresolved and opportunities to be better prepared for an outbreak were missed.

The airline and travel industries, now brought to their knees by the outbreak and seeking a $50 billion government bailout, opposed efforts by the CDC to set new rules for tracing infected passengers, calling them “burdensome.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/the-gao-told-the-government-in-2015-to-develop-a-plan-to-protect-the-aviation-system-against-an-outbreak-it-never-happened/2020/03/24/81cf1926-6555-11ea-b3fc-7841686c5c57_story.html

[tirebiter]

1. And this has what to do with what?

I’d say Obama dealing with H1N1, SARS and Ebola is more pertinent.