Emergency Management

The old adage, don't count your chickens before they hatch is entirely applicable to this first quarter. New year's resolutions dashed, training plans put on hold, job interview results put on ice, and for the foreseeable future staying at home to reduce the exponential growth of COVID-19. I had a feeling things wouldn't be routine this year once the overtime started kicking in.

Pandemic

I wasn't working at the time SARS hit, but I do remember back in 2013 when a strange respiratory illness showed up in the Middle East. It would eventually be classified as Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). At the time, it was a severe incident that had the potential to flare up into something far more dangerous. That was 2013, yet even today, you can see no vaccine has been developed for the disease. I recall visiting the command center where cases were being monitored, and information on the different clusters were being mapped out in a giant command room, something akin to a rocket launch command room with a multitude of monitors and charts. Unfortunately the incident then didn't percipitate a vaccine or therapeutic.

I was working at the WHO at the time in Food Safety and Zoonose department at the time. I had a much different mandate, but the time spent there left a lasting impact I had from my time at the WHO was the fact that the people and the mission were vital for preserving the health of humanity. I could relate to the real struggles regulators have across the world, convincing their local governments in funding and strengthing their capabilities to better respond and keep people safe.