One might think that the sole superpower in the world, as well as it also being the richest nation in the world, would obviously be the most prepared for a given pandemic, but clearly this is not the case, whatsoever. For instance, the United States actually consists of fifty different States, of which, each of these States when it comes to a pandemic seems to have a mind of its own. The thing about pandemics is that the borders of sovereign nations does not matter, and certain the borders of States, matters not. This would presuppose that the only robust way to deal with a potential pandemic is to have in place what the national response would be to such, and to thereby abide by it.
The time to get the right sort of response to a potential pandemic is at the very inception of it. In consideration, that never has the world been so small, because of the huge amount of trade and international travel so done, it must be taken into consideration, that therefore no nation is an island unto itself; which thus signifies, that those countries that are most interested in dealing successfully with a pandemic must have in place, prudent steps to preclude or mitigate such, to the best extent so possible, without having any unnecessary or misguided interruptions to the daily lives and business of its citizens.
While within a given pandemic there are always going to be, at least, initially, some unknowns, and of which each pandemic is different in its own way; that does not mean that there aren’t sensible steps that aren’t applicable to each pandemic. For instance, the United States is gifted with good, fresh water, which is necessary in order to properly help to soap up one’s hands and thereby to rid oneself of contaminants, of which, the proper teaching and thereby the following of good hand washing does reduce considerably the spread of germs. So too, the wearing of masks as well as gloves for hands most definitely has its necessary place, of which, there are those specific masks and gloves which perform a stellar service in the protecting of hands and face from germs, airborne droplets, as well as inadvertent splashes, sprays, and splatter. Additionally, a robust pandemic testing mechanism, that is both efficient as well as being inexpensive needs to be put into place as soon as possible, when a pandemic begins, for without such testing, it becomes problematic in being able to quickly separate the sheep from the goats, so to speak. Also, and very importantly, the people that need to be specifically isolated during a pandemic, are always going to first be the infected, followed by those that are its weakest and its most vulnerable, as compared to isolating the entire general population.
As they say, a stitch in time saves nine, so then, this sort of sensible mindset is of the upmost relevance for the beginning of a given pandemic; for vigorous steps taken at the beginning of such, are sure to mitigate the effects of that pandemic; whereas, misguided, confusing, and contradictory steps are sure to make matters worse and often with tragic results, that need not be the result, thereof. Those then, that will not prudently prepare for that which will surely happen will then have sown the wind, and thereby they will surely reap that subsequent terrible whirlwind.