In January 2017, incoming Trump administration officials were briefed on a novel strain of the flu overwhelming healthcare systems in Asia. Victims showed respiratory symptoms, governments restricted travel, and hospitals were running out of antivirals, ventilators, and personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers. The briefing was a part of a simulation, a tabletop exercise conducted during the presidential transition. It was followed in 2019 by a series of exercises called “Crimson Contagion.” Several think tanks and universities held similarly frightening and prophetic wargames, which Bill Gates had earlier dubbed “germ games.”
These simulations could have galvanized investments in pandemic preparedness and primed policymakers for crisis. Yet in March 2020, as the coronavirus spread around the world and throughout the United States, James Lawler, an infectious disease expert and advisor to both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, lamented: “We are making every misstep leaders initially made in table-tops …We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window.” Meanwhile, the press reported a frustrating incapacity to learn from pandemic wargames and war game-like exercises, which had shown the importance of rapid, not reactionary, responses to a fast-moving disease: early social distancing; timely data capture, testing, and contact tracing; surge production of antivirals, medical equipment, and PPE; clear and authoritative public communication; and international coordination. At almost every turn, the federal government lagged.
