As senior health advisor to the chief medical officer of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Dr. Tom McGinn was one of the nation’s best-placed officials to help devise a robust government response to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
In January 2020, the senior scientist in the Department’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office (CWMD) began imploring the DHS to aggressively respond to the threat he believed COVID-19 posed to the nation. Infections needed to be tracked, the country’s food-supply secured, law-enforcement agencies required help to protect their personnel and the origins of the virus had to be investigated.
“When you study emerging infectious diseases…the important thing is the earlier you can identify it, the greater the possibility you have to mitigate the impact so death and suffering are minimized,” says 68 year-old McGinn, a North Carolina-native living in Frederick County, Md. “The longer you wait to make a decision the more the disaster can escalate and cascade into…an out of control event.”
Well aware of COVID’s potential to spiral out of control – and spurred by CWMD’s legal obligation to act in times of disaster – McGinn drew up a memo questioning his office’s handling of 30 critical pandemic-related issues. Among his key concerns: How the DHS planned to monitor COVID’s spread, their strategy for developing a robust contract-tracing system and the creation of PPE employee guidelines. (They’re the types of topics addressed in the pair...
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