The Commonwealth of Virginia provides another best-practices example - this time in the public-health field - of how private-sector organizations can work with one another, and with their government counterparts, before rather than after a crisis erupts.
Disaster planning is difficult, time-consuming, sometimes boring - but also absolutely necessary. And in the long run it conserves resources, permits the most efficient use of the usually limited medical staff available, and saves a lot of lives.
The 2006 assassination of former KGB Colonel Alexander Litvenenko was eventually solved - but there are many questions still unanswered as well as strong suspicions about the operating tactics of Russia's post-USSR political leaders.
The almost pandemic outbreak of wildfires in California & other western states last year has aroused interest in a sometimes proposed but never authorized partial solution: enactment of a federally subsidized program to help high-risk communities.
Small businesses have big problems - during and in the aftermath of incidents causing damage to their facilities, inventories, and supply chains. The Homeland Security & Defense Business Council recognizes the problem & is doing something about it.
Private-sector U.S. hospitals are finding out that working more closely with one another in the new Age of Terrorism, as now required by law, is not only a prudent policy but also a sound business practice as well.
In a mass-casualty incident involving the rapid spread of dangerous diseases the most effective immediate defense will be a massive vaccination program. But who will do the vaccinating? No one knows for sure.
Kill diseases by starving them to death through social distancing! That is probably the most effective and lowest-cost means of containing the spread of diseases carried in microbe-laced weapons of mass destruction.
A job well begun is half done - supposedly. Recently issued Hospital Incident Command System guidelines may not be half the job, but they should make it much easier and considerably less complicated.
Who, when, how, and under what circumstances - those are only a few of the questions that are asked, and must be answered, in political, legal, and sometimes even combat situations calling for a transfer of decision-making command authority.
