Contingency Planning And Animal Disease Control: Fill & Download for Free

Back in the 1950s we prepared for nuclear war with a network of fallout shelters, which were designated by signs with the radiation trefoil symbol on them, black on yellow. Children practiced “duck and cover,” scooting under their desks, bowing their heads and covering them with their arms.Then we had no nuclear wars, the signs gradually disappeared, and by the time I hit primary school in 1962, we weren’t ducking and covering any more. We can’t possibly have contingency plans for every bad outcome we might imagine.Though a global viral pandemic is an outcome we imagined and at one point had prepared for. (For background, my wife’s an epidemiologist, so I’m not talking through my hat.)We have been aware of the likelihood of a pandemic for a generation. There have been academic conferences, security conferences, computer simulations, and a host of novels, TV shows, and movies about pandemics. One ambitious recent computer simulation used a coronavirus as the hypothetical mechanism of disease, and assumed it jumped from an animal host in China and spread throughout the world. So this was not, as Trump suggested, something “nobody thought anything like that would really happen.”So why no widespread contingency plan for a pandemic? Why no dozens of empty hospitals, trained brigades of respiratory therapists, vast stockpiles of N95 masks? Because the right epidemiological response is to act immediately to contain the infection. Consider the last deadly disease outbreak that we contained before it became pandemic—the Ebola virus, which killed 20% to 90% of those infected. Also within the last decade or two SARS that killed 20% and MERS that killed 75%.Imagine if any of those diseases had broken containment. That would have been World War Z, Walking Dead, The Stand kind of end-of-the-world stuff. That’s why you plan to shut down the disease before it breaks out.What is happening in the US now—uncontrolled community transmission, inadequate testing, and exponential growth of an out-of-control virus, is a failure of the pandemic response process. You can understand our failure by observing the success of containment in both South Korea and Singapore. Both did exactly what they should have done—rolled out the containment teams instantly, deployed tests quickly and widely, and then just did the hard boots-on-the-ground work of interviewing, tracking, quarantining, and then testing some more. COVID19 is contained in both places.So why is it not contained in the US? Because the Global Pandemic Response Team within the National Security Council, set up by Obama after the mistakes made during the Ebola response in 2013, was disbanded by the Trump administration. So when the coronavirus made landfall in the US, there was nobody to lead the effort to contain it, nobody to drive the most urgent possible response, nobody to cut through the CDC bureaucracy and get multiple effective tests deployed.What’s happening now is like when Philly Mayor Wilson Goode dropped a bomb on a row house in West Philadelphia, and the fire department watched the house burn for an hour before trying to put it out. You don’t have a contingency plan for putting out an entire burning city block because you plan to extinguish the blaze before it spreads that far. (To be fair, the row house was full of heavily armed lowlifes who were shooting at the firemen.) In the end, the entire city block burned to the ground.The virus is not contained, and at this point cannot be contained, because the government did a totally inadequate job of responding in real time when this was a manageable problem. Without question, that is because of the incompetence, narcissism, and stupidity of Donald Trump.

The VA is funded, so it should not be affected. Below is a list of affected agencies.AgricultureMore than 60 percent of the department’s staff would report to work for the first five days of a partial shutdown, but the number of employees at any given agency would vary depending on its mission and funding source, according to the Agriculture Department’s shutdown plans.At the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a mix of trust funds and user fees would allow workers to continue to inspect for pests in fruits, vegetables and birds being exported or imported. About 69 percent of employees would continue duties ranging from treatment of ticks in cattle and deer along the U.S.-Mexico border, to caring for animals at labs and research facilitiesCarried over funding and reimbursements would allow the Food Safety and Inspection Service to continue inspections of meat, poultry and egg products, lab work to identify food safety threats and emergency preparedness.About 5 percent of workers at the department’s Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services would be needed to keep benefits flowing to beneficiaries in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Women, Infants and Children program and the national school lunch and breakfast programs.CommerceWith continuing funds from previous appropriations, the department says it will continue to provide services from agencies including the Bureau of the Census, National Institute of Science and Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.EPAThe agency will for now continue operating because it still has carried-over funds.“Prudent management requires the proper preparation for all contingencies, including the possibility that a lapse in appropriated funding could occur,” acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an emailed statement. “EPA’s Contingency Plan for Shutdown calls for the agency to assess whether there are sufficient carryover funds to operate for a period of time in the event of a lapse in funding and a government shutdown. We have done that assessment and determined that EPA has sufficient carryover funds to operate for a limited period of time.”Financial RegulationSome, but not all, of the nation’s financial regulatory agencies would be significantly affected. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation would operate normally, as those fee-funded agencies are unaffected by the congressional appropriations process. Similarly, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau receives its funding from the Federal Reserve and will remain unaffected by a shutdown.While the Securities and Exchange Commission is also funded through fees, it is subject to the appropriations process and will reduce staffing from 4,400 employees to about 300 essential personnel to handle emergencies and continue law enforcement actions. The SEC’s filing system, EDGAR, will remain accessible, but the Commission will not accept filings, provide interpretative advice or issue no-action letters during the shutdown.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Treasury Department will also curtail operations to just a few essential functions such as criminal investigations. Notably, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provided the IRS implementation funding through Sept. 30, 2019. Still, only 12.5 percent of IRS employees, mostly related to enforcement, will remain on the job. Representatives from those agencies did not respond to requests for more detail on which functions will remain in operation during the shutdown.Health and Human ServicesFour parts of the Department of Health and Human Services are still running on a continuation of fiscal 2018 funding and would have to initiate shutdown plans if a deal isn’t reached. That includes the FDA and the Indian Health Service, which each have budgets north of $5 billion, and smaller parts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.Homeland SecurityMost employees at the Department of Homeland Security — 212,500 or 87 percent of staff — are exempt from a lapse in government funding and will be expected to continue to report to work because most of them work in essential services like law enforcement or disaster relief. In other cases, their salaries are funded by money that is not subject to congressional appropriations.The vast majority of employees at the department’s biggest agencies — including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration — are considered essential personnel, and so continue to work even under a shutdown. Salaries at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are funded by fees paid by visa applicants and immigrant petitioners.InteriorNational parks will remain as accessible as possible “while still following all applicable laws and procedures,” an Interior spokesman said.There may be some restricted access to National Park Service areas like some public lands, trails and sites because of fewer employees on the ground. The agency said it is prioritizing keeping the most accessible and iconic areas of parks and public lands available to the public, but plans may vary at different locations.JusticeThe Justice Department will largely be up and operating as many of its functions relate to the protection of life and property, which are functions exempt from the shutdown. Altogether, about 84 percent of Justice Department employees are exempt and will be working; that’s 95,000 out of 113,000 Justice Department employees, according to a department memo put out in September of this year.So the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. attorneys, the Bureau of Prisons and department criminal activities go forward during a shutdown. The Office of Special Counsel, under special funding, also goes forward, so Robert Mueller III’s investigative team does not get furloughed.StateThe department’s contingency plan as posted on OMB does not specify operations of offices that will continue, but does say those “identified by the Bureau of Budget and Planning (BP) and the Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance (F) will continue to operate until their respective balances are insufficient to continue.”TransportationAt the Federal Aviation Administration, services including air traffic control, field inspections and security operations will continue. Indeed, most of the department’s other agencies will continue to operate with carryover funding, according to the DOT contingency plan.Shutdown Effects: Breakdown by Department and Agency

Source: Holocaust Timeline: Map of Nazi Concentration CampsDid Hitler Do Any Good Deeds?Hitler was kind to animals and condescending with children. He patted their heads and smiled at them. Then he sent their fathers to die in Russia and their mothers to be serviced by outsiders.Anything Hitler touched he destroyed.Evil people to be effective need to do good deeds and have some positive qualities. German soldiers were efficient. They helped each other, were loyal to one another, encouraged the disheartened among them, ensured that each was treated reasonably and received their basic needs, etc. They may have been better at this than soldiers in other armies were. That made them better fighters and enabled them to kill more people.In WW2 that meant good qualities in the service of an evil cause.So too, with Hitler. People worshiped him.Germans who lived in that era say that they felt more alive and invigorated during the early days of Hitler than at any other time.Evil needs some good to sustain itself.But how good was it really?Going through a list of "Kindnesses" attributed to Hitler we can make observations and reservations of our own.Saving the EconomyIt is claimed that Hitler saved the economy and restored Germany after the previous regime (i.e. the "Weimar Republic") had failed.Maybe. The Weimar Republic had its ups and downs. It was already on an upward swing when Hitler took over. Part of the previous troubles had been due to international fluctuations over which Germany had no control. Another very important factor in the failure of the Republic was deliberate sabotage by right-wing and moneyed classes. German Capitalists WANTED SOMEONE LIKE HITLER! They were preparing themselves for it. Many of the Nazi Policies were merely contingency plans prepared long beforehand and then put into effect.Economic Boom?The Nazi program put Germany in debt by overspending. This obligated them to go to war in order to introduce a command economy and commandeer the resources of others.Saving Germany from Communism?Maybe. If that was what was needed then it stands to reason that other ways of doing it were also available.Anti-smoking and Anti-Illicit Drug campaigns.There may be something to this, or there may not. Venereal Disease increased during the Nazi Era. SS members were especially susceptible. Promiscuity among German boys and girls seems to have been encouraged.All those rapists from Russia who entered Germany at the end of the War also came in at the courtesy of Hitler. He would have considered it a Law of Nature and in his Last Testament (as recorded by William Shirer) virtually said as much.Animal Cruelty Laws.These were issued on the same days that the Nuremberg Laws were promulgated. Who was being cruel to who?Scientific research Results encouraged by Nazis.This was an outcome of German ability in general. The British and Americans did more. So did Jewish scientists who fled the Nazis. One did not need to be a Nazi to put two and two together.Strong punishment against rapists and pedophiles.Many of those arrested by the Nazis for homosexual crimes and the like were Catholic Priests. This may have been part of the Cultural Warfare of the Nazis against Christianity.The end result of Nazism was an increase in rape perpetrated at first by Germans against other peoples and then by other peoples against Germans.CulpabilityHitler shares with other Nazis, the German people, and Axis forces responsibility for:The death of ca. 6 million Jews.The death and suffering of 100s of millions others.