COVID-19 The Great Global Equalizer

2022 Resilience Conference

The Great Global Equalizer Adam Montella, MPA, CHS-V, CMP

Welcome • 36 years in Emergency Management, Homeland Security and Business Continuity at all levels of government, private sector, and NGO organizations.

• On-Camera SME for the Discovery Channel series, THE COLONY • FEMA Team Lead for COVID-19 Community Vaccination Centers (CVC) Site Support Team • 30 + COVID-19 After-Action Reviews and Reports for, DHS, FEMA, New Jersey, Illinois, New York, Cities, Counties, and Fortune 100 Companies.

Epidemic -vs- Pandemic • Epidemic A community or regional outbreak of an infectious disease • Pandemic A global epidemic; sweep the globe in several 2/3-month waves

Assumptions In Healthcare Disaster Preparedness • The response will be clear and coordinated (“I don’t need a command structure”) • We will meet the needs of our patients by just focusing on “patient care” • If we just worry about our facility, we will be OK • There is no need to understand the public health response since we are the medical response

Challenges Personal • • • • • • • • • •

School Work Economics Supply Services Technology Medical Care Travel Information Plans and Policies

• • • • • • • • • •

Community

Health Care

Workforce Services Operations Travel Economics Supply Technology Civil Order Continuity Plans and Policies

• Workforce • Surge Capability • Economics • Supply • Continuity • Plans and Policies

Private Sector • • • • • • • •

Workforce Supply Economics Supply Travel Technology Continuity Plans and Policies

Strategies Social Distancing: Keeping healthy and infected people apart helps slow the spread • • • • •

Voluntarily stay home Limit time spent in crowds Cancellation of public gatherings Closure of public places and schools Restrictions on travel

Isolation: Separation of sick people from healthy people

Vaccination Clinics

Enhanced infection control education efforts

Quarantine Measures Suspension of public gatherings ◼ Closure of public places ◼ Restriction of travel ◼

Look Familiar?

The preceding slides came from 2007 Pandemic Planning, Not COVID Major Differences Between Then and Now • Influenza -vs- COVID; However, we planned for SARS, but it was a minimal event.

• Technology was not available to be seamlessly remote was not available 15 years ago.

• No one anticipated the scope and duration of the event

COVID-19 – The Great Global Equalizer • No one, no organization, no community escaped – Economic (unemployment, illness/extended leave, lack of personnel, lack of supplies) – Psychological (higher suicide, domestic and workplace violence, civil discourse, and civil unrest) – Political (clear division, politicians and CEOs managed the disaster)

COVID-19 – The Great Global Equalizer • No one, no organization, no community escaped – Health (side effects of both the virus and the vaccines) – Childhood development (speech, trust, physical development) – Technology (increased cyberattacks, lack of infrastructure, educating an older population)

COVID-19 Common Issues • Emergency Plans, Policies, and Procedures – Business Continuity – Continuity of Operations – Continuity of Government – COVID-19 Exposure Reporting and Return to Work

COVID-19 Common Issues • Emergency Protective Measures – Social Distancing (Six-Foot Rule) – Staggered Start/Stop Times – Contact Barriers (i.e., plexiglass facings) – Cleaning, Sanitizing, and Disinfecting

COVID-19 Common Issues • Telework / Remote work – Capabilities – Plans, Policies, and Procedures – Equipment and Resources

COVID-19 Common Issues • Logistics and Procurement – Supply Chain Issues – Shortage of COVID Related Resources (i.e., PPE) – Shortage of Basic Supplies – Shortage of Technology Resources – Non-traditional Vendors and Contracts – Emergency Procurement Policies – Inventory Tracking and Data Reporting – Storage Space for COVID Related Commodities

COVID-19 Common Issues • Communications – Changing Guidance and Directives – Prioritization of Internal and External Messaging – Adjustments to “Routine” Messaging Approval Processes – Transparency and Information Sharing – Active Stakeholder Engagement in Decision-Making – Schedule Adjustments/Enhancements of Meetings and Briefings – Inclusion of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for Content

COVID-19 Common Issues • Staffing – Scheduling Challenges – Positional/Functional Bench-Depth – Staff Burnout – Equity (i.e., Task Delegation, Telework Approval, etc.)

– Decrease in Organizational Morale – Implementation of Morale Boosting Activities – Layoffs, Furloughs, and Early Retirements

COVID-19 Common Issues • Training – Additional Training on Emergency Plans • Emergency Operations Plans • Emergency Action Plans • Continuity Plans (i.e., BC, COOP, COG) – Emergency Roles and Responsibilities and Cross-Training – Infectious Disease Training – Telework / Remote Work (i.e., Training on Technology) – Transition / Recovery / Reconstitution Training

COVID-19 Failures • The federal government was not ready for COVID-19, even though it has dealt with epidemics and pandemics for more than a century.

• Foreclosures, evictions, massive unemployment, car repossessions, and waves of business failures ranging from retailers, restaurants, airlines, and health, fitness, & wellbeing centers, among others.

COVID-19 Failures • Although climate change may have greater long-term consequences, the COVID-19 pandemic has had more immediate effects on the global business ecosystem.

• Shifting to a largely remote education and work environment.

• General lack of preparedness.

Best Laid Plans?

• Hurricanes Ian, Michael, Charley, Katrina, Sandy, Andrew • Japan Tsunami, Earthquake and Nuclear Power Incident • Haiti Earthquake • Anthrax release at the U.S. Capital • 9/11 • COVID-19

Failure to Identify Potentially Threatening Events

We don’t get [FILL IN THE BLANK] here.

We like to focus on stuff that could really happen Paramus Mall Shooting – ABCnews.com

Unanticipated Needs and Resources

We have a vendor down the road that can provide us what we need.

Planning In Isolation

We’re good! I wrote our policies and procedures myself. Used a template I downloaded from the internet a couple years ago.

Focusing On Product, Not Process

Every organization has That Guy. He’s not too busy. He can write the plan.

Lack of Familiarity Among Users I emailed a draft copy of the policy, procedures and all 35 annexes to every office and department last year...

Strange, I haven’t received any comments back.

Failure to Test and Train We were thinking about maybe having A disaster exercise to test the plan, but with everybody’s schedule and these tight budgets it just hasn’t been possible.

Ocean City NJ After Sandy – History’s Greatest Disasters

Maybe next year we can do a little one

Identifying Root Cause

The Doppler Effect • Most organizations and most people for that matter do not adequately plan for A disaster until they have experienced one.

• There is usually an initial push to be better prepared after a disaster affects an organization.

• Unless that effort is institutionalized and made A priority, eventually things return to a normal level of complacency.

• The “doppler effect”

Doppler Effect • Many Systems Allow Us To Feel The “Sound” Of An Impending Disaster • Once We Can Can “Feel” It… – We Can Take Actions To Improve Our Preparedness, or…

– We Can Ignore It And Hope

A P P R O A C HI N G

HIGHER FREQUENCY

LOWER FREQUENCY

Doppler Effect – The Train

R E C E DI N G

Doppler Effect • Unless We Ourselves Have Been Hit By The Disaster We Tend To Remember The Event Only To The Extent That We Feel That Vibration • The Further Away The Disaster Moves, The Less Likely We Are To Believe It Could Happen Again • We plan for the effects of THAT event.

“Plans are Nothing, Planning is Everything”

On the eve of the Normandy invasion, General Dwight D. Eisenhower gave voice to one of the most famous and important axioms of operational planning.

Planning Today • Plans are nothing, planning is everything - It would appear that if we simply embraced Eisenhower’s the nation would be adequately postured to respond to all threats now omnipresent in our environment.

• To this day, we have yet to adopt a construct for planning that gives us the flexibility necessary to fit the domestic environment.

• We continue to see our incident management efforts hindered by the inherent inadequacy of the static written plan.

The Failure is in the Written Plan • Not surprisingly, in the post 9-11 era, organizations have readily tried to emulate the purported “best practice” they associate with military planning and Joint Operational Planning and Execution System (JOPES).

• They have put enormous efforts (and enormous budgets) into producing essentially the same static, written products —the notorious “3-ring binders” that populate the shelves of the agencies and organizations • Those plans are, for all intents and purposes, useless.

The Failure is in the Planning (The written Plan) • About one minute after one of those 3-ring binders are complete and sent to the shelf, they are outdated and not consistent with the threats that dominate the environment they exist in.

• Threat is fluid and ever-changing. Unless a plan is continually being worked on and adjusted to the environment it exists in, it has no utility in responding to an event that may occur days, weeks, months, or years after it has been produced.

The Failure is in the Planning (Numerous Standards) • Fractious and disparate planning always leads to fractious and disparate response.

• If stakeholders don’t work from the same sheet of instructions and collaborate during the planning process, there will be the inevitable disaster upon a disaster when a “coordinated” response is required.

• The response to COVID-19 will remain the textbook case study of this important lesson...for now.

The Failure is in the Planning • The plans being produced are siloed to the agencies and organizations that are producing them.

• We fail to plan uniformly across the spectrum of organizations expected to participate in an event response.

• We need to borrow from the IT industry and adopt the notion of network centricity when it comes to planning for domestic disaster response.

What are the Components of Good Planning?

• • • • • •

Follow a Repeatable Process Involve Everyone Plan for the Worst-Case Scenario Make the Plan Dynamic and Flexible Train and Exercise the Plan Don’t Forget the People

Follow a Repeatable Process • Develop or follow a planning process that works for your organization.

• Make the process agile; Don’t tackle the entire elephant all at once.

• Build-in feedback loops from training, exercises, and real-world events (Continuous Improvement).

• Develop courses of action (COA) options for improvement. The right choice may have barriers but is still the right choice.

Follow a Repeatable Process • Develop or follow a planning process that works for your organization.

• Make the process agile; Don’t tackle the entire elephant all at once.

• Build-in feedback loops from training, exercises, and real-world events (Continuous Improvement).

Follow a Repeatable Process • Develop courses of action (COA) options for improvement. The right choice may have barriers but is still the right choice.

• Make change management a priority.

• Follow through on your plans and corrective action and resiliency initiatives.

Engage Everyone • Disaster planning must involve all stakeholders in the process. Just as data recovery takes into consideration different priorities and timeframes for bringing systems back n line, different priorities and timelines exist for bringing services back to a pre-disaster level.

• Additionally, it is critically important for government, private industry, and community organizations to plan together, as there is a reliance on each other for components of response and recovery.

Engage Everyone • Engage the people charged with implementing the plans in their development, not just top-down. From the White House to the Court House and from the Janitor to the CEO. – Include your partners and customers.

Plan for the Worst-Case Scenario • While you can’t plan for every contingency when developing your plan, consider not only your organization’s vulnerabilities, which can include location, security threats, etc. but also your company’s capabilities.

• Forecast or monitor for indicators that something worse is on the horizon.

Plan for the Worst-Case Scenario • The plan must be grounded in reality. When you write your plan, consider the capabilities and resources that exist today – not what you are planning toward or will eventually purchase.

• Make the planning all-hazards and consequence-based.

Make the Plan Simple, Dynamic, and Flexible • Continual Preparedness takes planning, a lot of planning, and the integrated response that follows it, to an entirely new level.

• Technologies exist today that effectively bridge the gap between collaboration and true interoperability in both communications and data environments.

Make the Plan Simple, Dynamic, and Flexible • Planning standards such as CPG-101, the National Response Framework, NIMS, ICS, coupled with online collaboration and planning tools allow coordinated and seamless planning to take place.

• Get to the point quickly. I should not have to thumb through 20 pages of the planning foundation to find out my instructions for the response.

• Use role-based checklists and job aids

Train and Exercise the Plan • The plan is only good if every stakeholder is aware of the plan and how to use it. Short of an actual disaster, the easiest and most efficient way to test a plan is through a training exercise.

• An exercise: – Serves as the “final exam” at the end of a planning cycle.

– Fosters communication between business units.

– Trains users on the employment of a plan and their role in a disaster.

– Provides a “no-fault” environment to identify gaps.

Don’t Forget the People • The plan is developed, personnel are trained, and the plan has been tested. Then, a disaster strikes, and the plan still fails.

• Some plans have ignored or forgotten the most important aspect of the disaster planning process: ALL DISASTERS AFFECT PEOPLE.

Questions?

Plans are Nothing …Planning is Everything!

Contact • Adam Montella – amontella@olsongroupltd.com – (813) 355-7988