Honestly, I don't see the nursing home issue as some sort of crime against humanity. Yes, lots of old people died in nursing homes, but the residential care model itself is largely to blame - in other words, it's systemic. Start with the fact that they are inherently high-density, which we now understand is a prominent driver of infection as a stand-alone factor. Combine that with the fact that most of the residents aren't in great health to begin with, add in the scope of practice inherent to nursing home staff and top it off with the additional element of a for-profit business model and you have a recipe for disaster.
The only possible solution would have been to remove all of the Covid positive residents and put them someplace else. It wouldn't have been impossible to do, but it absolutely would have been difficult. But again, I go back to the notion of "cohesive strategy". I can't say this enough so I'll shout it, secure in the knowledge that we know each other well enough that you'll understand I'm not yelling at you: IT IS THE JOB OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO DEVELOP PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES.
Handling virus outbreak in high density residential facilities, as well as handling virus outbreak within the context of at-risk populations, should be elementary within the context of those strategies.
The Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, published during the Obama administration and mentioned, anecdotally, throughout the last several months (and the exact document which Trump and his administration has claimed never existed) is laid out in a manner which would be eerily familiar to you and I (and
@e5fdny as well). It reads almost exactly like any federal document oriented toward emergency management. And one of the things that it does is outline, very specifically, a sort of ICS/NIMS event-response rubric allowing for the deployment of various task force components to investigate, manage and mitigate infectious disease outbreaks as well as the deployment of material resources from federal stockpiles. It is precisely the same command / control / execute structure that we are familiar with, having taken all of the ICS/NIMS certification courses. As you read through it, you begin to understand that there was, in fact, a general outline for pandemic response at the federal level which was overwhelmingly ignored.
There's serious dot-connecting to be done, here. Recall the conversations about Trump's refusal to engage the previous administration for purposes of transition planning. The mismanagement of this event is a direct result of the fact that almost none of those (typically) hundreds of meetings was ever held. To put it in more relatable terms, imagine if an election of officers was held at your firehouse or first aid squad. Imagine that the people who won, top to bottom, had no actual experience in firefighting or first aid and no experience running such an organization. Now imagine that the New Year comes along and they walk into the house for the first time, get sworn in, and then tell all of the outgoing officers to GTFO.
Now imagine a major MCI in the following days.
It's a really good analogy.
