Note: All over the world, the U.S. state department is undertaking these types of operations on behalf of citizens.  It’s too bad that our major television networks do not more reasonably cover worldwide events affecting our country.  -dh

Excerpts from yesterday’s State Department Email: Location: Ecuador (country-wide).  Today, four more U.S. State Department-sponsored flights departed Ecuador, two each from Guayaquil and Quito, returning 403 Americans home.  To date, a total of six U.S. State Department-sponsored flights have taken 631 Americans home.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador has worked closely with commercial airlines to facilitate the return of an additional 1,754 Americans.  In total, 2,385 Americans have returned home thanks to U.S. government assistance.  We strongly encourage all U.S. citizens who wish to return home to consider commercial flight options listed on the U.S. Embassy’s websitehttps://ec.usembassy.gov/.   Due to the global nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worldwide demand for evacuation assistance, we CANNOT GUARANTEE any additional U.S. State Department-chartered flights and/or commercial flights will be available for U.S. citizens wishing to depart….


One of Alaska’s clearest thinking commentators offers elected leaders a planning model designed to focus efforts on the most critical needs of citizens during such a crisis.  

Alaska’s Incident Response to the Coming Coronavirus (nCoViD-19) Pandemic

by

Glen Biegel

Here are some sample items that I would consider part of any thorough incident plan:

Positive item: distribution of purell and clorox to individual people.  Local distribution stations available for drive up distribution of products critical to fighting the virus.

Educational item: how to take care of a positive/quarantined individual and prevent the spread of the virus within a family

Resource item: taking actions within our economy (shutdowns, restrictions, closures) that will have drastic outcomes need to be performed for specific reasons, for specific time frames, and in a measured way.  No knee-jerk actions with drastic economic impact without a lot of specifics.

READ BIEGEL’S FULL PROPOSAL HERE


Distress In A High VUCA Pandemic

by

Al Bolea

Al Bolea. NGP Photo by Dave Harbour

We’re all dealing with a massive disruption in our lives. Social distancing and shelter-in-place orders have required us to think through the minutia of our lives that is normally dealt with by the reflexive part of our brains. Just being aware of the surfaces that we touch and trying to avoid them is taxing the limited capacity of our consciousness. As a result, the cognitive space for higher level thinking is impaired.

… we’re dealing with a high VUCA situation. That is, it’s (V) volatile because the spread of the virus is constantly changing, (U) uncertain as we don’t know when the crisis will end and if we or people close to us have or have not been exposed, (C) complex due to the chaos and confusion about protective gear, vaccines, other medical treatments, and altered access to basic needs like food and toilet paper, and (A) ambiguous due to the lack of precedent for the virus and the debate among medical professionals about its severity.