[Genuine Realist]

And tour guides have never, ever, embellished or even made up stories about places to amuse the tourists.

This sounds like the embodiment of "truthiness".

To your larger point, while there is always the danger of fighting the last war, so to speak, it seems like a broad, well-funded public health campaign might be generally useful.  In addition to dealing with pandemics, public health agencies can do a lot of good in terms of much more run-of-the-mill diseases, including influenza, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, food borne illnesses such as E. coli outbreaks, not to mention non-infectious conditions; as recently as last year, the CDC was on the hunt for the agent that was causing electronic cigarette users to develop severe respiratory symptoms (turned out to be vitamin E acetate which was used as a vehicle for THC cartridges).  And while most novel outbreaks won't develop into a widespread pandemic, there will always be threats: there are many new coronaviruses out there, a novel influenza strain could cause a 1918-like pandemic, there's zika, west nile virus, and other mosquito-borne viruses, Ebola, and many other zoonotic diseases.

To me the analogy is less like the (possibly apocryphal) tale of Catherine the Great's flower garden, and more like maintaining an army during peacetime.  We spend billions a year training and maintaining an arm.  While there may be genuine disagreement over the right level of spending for the military, I think few serious people would recommend completely dismantling the military at peacetime and trying to reconstitute it when we get into a war.  You would always want, I would think, an adequate ready trained and active military with the possibility of calling up a body of reserves should the need arise.

BC

I think you want a reserve army. 

BTW, this was no ordinary tour guide. Three days of pretty intense study of St. Petersburg and its environs. She was no lightweight.

[Genuine Realist]

And tour guides have never, ever, embellished or even made up stories about places to amuse the tourists.

This sounds like the embodiment of "truthiness".

To your larger point, while there is always the danger of fighting the last war, so to speak, it seems like a broad, well-funded public health campaign might be generally useful.  In addition to dealing with pandemics, public health agencies can do a lot of good in terms of much more run-of-the-mill diseases, including influenza, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, food borne illnesses such as E. coli outbreaks, not to mention non-infectious conditions; as recently as last year, the CDC was on the hunt for the agent that was causing electronic cigarette users to develop severe respiratory symptoms (turned out to be vitamin E acetate which was used as a vehicle for THC cartridges).  And while most novel outbreaks won't develop into a widespread pandemic, there will always be threats: there are many new coronaviruses out there, a novel influenza strain could cause a 1918-like pandemic, there's zika, west nile virus, and other mosquito-borne viruses, Ebola, and many other zoonotic diseases.

To me the analogy is less like the (possibly apocryphal) tale of Catherine the Great's flower garden, and more like maintaining an army during peacetime.  We spend billions a year training and maintaining an arm.  While there may be genuine disagreement over the right level of spending for the military, I think few serious people would recommend completely dismantling the military at peacetime and trying to reconstitute it when we get into a war.  You would always want, I would think, an adequate ready trained and active military with the possibility of calling up a body of reserves should the need arise.

BC

I think you want a reserve army. 

BTW, this was no ordinary tour guide. Three days of pretty intense study of St. Petersburg and its environs. She was no lightweight.