[Genuine Realist]

Boy, that's harder than it seems. We have never had this need before.

Actually, yes, we have needed it before and had it before. The States and counties had permanent staff whose job it was to identify, trace, and track TB. There were also hospitals owned by both the states and Federal government to house people with TB. Lots of these facilities were closed in the late 60's/early 70's Even today there are "residual" TB testing and tracing responsibilities at the county level. This isn't a "new" thing.

We might never have it again for a few centuries.

True. One could say that the last time a "novel" disease really affected the US was the 1918 pandemic. So, maybe once in a hundred years could be a guess at the frequency. However, travel across the entire world has become so much faster and so much more common that the probability of a major novel disease being transferred from one part of the world to everywhere else is much greater. The damage such a disease can cause is also much greater, as the much larger urban population relies on "essential services". We can't all SIP and survive. In addition, the economic consequences are severe.

The US was fortunate that neither SARS or MERS really took hold here. In nations where it did, they learned the lesson and kept their tracking, tracing, and containment strategies in place. Australia has a pretty good capability as well because of all the epidemics in New Guinea. In the past 20 years, we have seen SARS, MERS, H1N1, ZIKA virus and EBOLA pop up. We basically dodged them or they weren't bad enough to hurt us much. COVID-19 was that bad.

<snip>
Maybe you could include it in National Guard protocols, or police affiliates, or some such, so you have a useful cadre of volunteers at the ready. It  would also fit neatly into the rubric of national service, in which I believe. But a dedicated unit? Might turn into another flower guard thing.

I doubt it. It is very probable we will see another serious viral threat in the next 10 years, given that we saw 6 in the last 20 years. We didn't need a great tracing capability 5 of the 6 times, but when we did, boy howdy did we. Having volunteers or part timers as the core of our response won't cut it. They have to be ready to go on day 0 or we have no hope of containment. We can argue about what the "right" staffing level may be. Right now, Santa Clara County is looking at about 1000 people. Maybe in the future having 250 full time, 250 trained but working elsewhere as county employees, and 500 not yet trained but available from other departments/organizations might work. The state is looking at 10,000. We probably don't need that many on the job all the time, but we do need a "surge" capability with training plans to ramp up very quickly if required. We can't let this happen to us again without making a good effort to prevent it.

Did we in fact do any effective testing with SARS, MERS, and the others? It certainly wasn't particularly well publicized.

[Genuine Realist]

Boy, that's harder than it seems. We have never had this need before.

Actually, yes, we have needed it before and had it before. The States and counties had permanent staff whose job it was to identify, trace, and track TB. There were also hospitals owned by both the states and Federal government to house people with TB. Lots of these facilities were closed in the late 60's/early 70's Even today there are "residual" TB testing and tracing responsibilities at the county level. This isn't a "new" thing.

We might never have it again for a few centuries.

True. One could say that the last time a "novel" disease really affected the US was the 1918 pandemic. So, maybe once in a hundred years could be a guess at the frequency. However, travel across the entire world has become so much faster and so much more common that the probability of a major novel disease being transferred from one part of the world to everywhere else is much greater. The damage such a disease can cause is also much greater, as the much larger urban population relies on "essential services". We can't all SIP and survive. In addition, the economic consequences are severe.

The US was fortunate that neither SARS or MERS really took hold here. In nations where it did, they learned the lesson and kept their tracking, tracing, and containment strategies in place. Australia has a pretty good capability as well because of all the epidemics in New Guinea. In the past 20 years, we have seen SARS, MERS, H1N1, ZIKA virus and EBOLA pop up. We basically dodged them or they weren't bad enough to hurt us much. COVID-19 was that bad.

<snip>
Maybe you could include it in National Guard protocols, or police affiliates, or some such, so you have a useful cadre of volunteers at the ready. It  would also fit neatly into the rubric of national service, in which I believe. But a dedicated unit? Might turn into another flower guard thing.

I doubt it. It is very probable we will see another serious viral threat in the next 10 years, given that we saw 6 in the last 20 years. We didn't need a great tracing capability 5 of the 6 times, but when we did, boy howdy did we. Having volunteers or part timers as the core of our response won't cut it. They have to be ready to go on day 0 or we have no hope of containment. We can argue about what the "right" staffing level may be. Right now, Santa Clara County is looking at about 1000 people. Maybe in the future having 250 full time, 250 trained but working elsewhere as county employees, and 500 not yet trained but available from other departments/organizations might work. The state is looking at 10,000. We probably don't need that many on the job all the time, but we do need a "surge" capability with training plans to ramp up very quickly if required. We can't let this happen to us again without making a good effort to prevent it.

Did we in fact do any effective testing with SARS, MERS, and the others? It certainly wasn't particularly well publicized.