Stanford Medicine November 3, 2021
In the third installment of “The Pandemic Puzzle: Lessons from COVID-19,” leaders and experts in government, academia, health care and business said the U.S. government must step up to build and coordinate a true, robust public health system.
Two days after the White House declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rear Admiral John Polowczyk was called in to help. The emergency stockpile of key medical supplies had been emptied. The world’s economies were shutting down. Cases and deaths were rising.
Polowcyzk immediately realized he was flying blind. He outlined the problem in a meeting with the nation’s largest providers of medical supplies.
“Next thing I know,” Polowczyk said, “I had their...