Ramp-Up, Declarations, Institutions, Federalism

The world's entire emergency response ecosystem wouldn't be ramping up if the risk wasn't serious. And the risk isn't just the (fairly low) mortality rate combined with a higher rate of transmission. There are and will be interdependencies and cascading effects in the systems, infrastructure, and supply chains we all use and rely on every day. We're seeing some of that impact already. There will be more.

All of this action to ramp-up does not mean there is panic. It means that the response ecosystem is ramping up to address and attempt to mitigate some of the risk. That's the entire point.

It is the job of people in all of these fields to see risk coming, and make a judgment that it's serious.

It's one of the reasons we have government. At every level. It's fundamental. It's public safety. It's public health. Life and death. At scale.

Public health is one of the main reasons we even have government. It's too big for us to handle on our own. It's work that requires a collective in order to be successful. And we'd like to be successful. Humanity is nice. Civilization is nice. Also most of us are kind of partial to at least some of the people. Including ourselves.

News has come out that emergency declarations are starting.

Emergency declarations will start to occur more frequently in jurisdictions and states. A jurisdiction could be anything from a city to county to parrish to tribe to regional government.

These emergency declarations are not a reason to panic either. They are levers. They are the system working exactly as it is supposed to. That's resilience; activated.

Those declarations mean that certain authorities are enacted. Emergency declarations / increased preparedness levels indicate that steps are being taken to free up or move resources, to change authorizations, to shift employees, to bring in staff, to release or move emergency funding, and so on. They are related to team activations, commission actions, multi-agency coordinating groups, and joint information systems.

All of this stuff needs time to ramp up so that it can effectively serve the public. Emergency declarations help with all of this. They are meant to help serve the public better. They usually have several stages of ramp-up.

If you are looking for messages to spread today, that overall point might be a good one. Just because there are declarations doesn't mean we should panic. It means that state and local systems are working the way they should.

Through all of this, that will be a key. The emerging tyranny of the Trump Administration is eroding institutions, the rule of law, scientific rigor in policy and action, and norms.

Federalism can help us. It's the the way the United States is set up. Power is distributed here between the federal government and state and local governments. County and tribal governments also have authorities. State constitutions lay out the structures for each state. Some have more powerful authorities at the state level, and some authorities are more powerful locally.

All of that power and authority carries power and authority when the federal government is rocky.

We can anchor to that. We can anchor to our strong and functional state and local government. We will need to. We will need to prop them up. We can help them share messages and reach people. We will need to make sure they have resources and support. We can help back them and keep them strong. We need that. We need that stability.

Our communities are our anchor. They're strong. The federal government is shaky right now. Our state and local governments are not.

Let's make sure to keep them that way while we get the federal government stabilized.

Thus ends this morning's coronavirus perspective.