Cold War-style preparedness could help fight future pandemics
by Alex Bitterman and Daniel Baldwin Hess
A key group of allies is missing in the U.S. effort to face the coronavirus pandemic: the American people.
In the wake of World War II and during the Cold War, the U.S. was the world’s best at planning and preparing for mobilizing the citizenry to take action in an emergency. In those days, the anticipated emergency was a nuclear attack on the U.S., likely resulting in a loss of national leadership that required local governments and members of the public to step up.