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Four Questions About the Covid-19 Pandemic

Emergency Planning

What are, and have been, the key challenges in coping with the Covid-19 pandemic? The first challenge is to understand the behaviour of an emerging disease caused by a new variant of a virus. Viral pandemics can have impacts that are as significant in the socio-economic field as they are in epidemiology and viral medicine.

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Interpreting the Pandemic for Decision Making and Action

Emergency Planning

As the Covid-19 pandemic progresses, causing distributed crises in one country after another, it is like watching all I have taught about for the last four decades flash past in a sort of speeded-up film. My primary message was that a pandemic is as much a socio-economic and behavioural problem as a medical and epidemiological one.

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A Proposed Strategy to Advocate for Improved Civil Protection in the United Kingdom

Emergency Planning

The lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic, alas largely negative, show that a good civilian system designed to protect the public against major hazards and threats can save thousands of lives and billions in losses and wasted expenditure. Non-seasonal influenza retains the potential to cause a pandemic on the level of that of 1918-1920.

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September is National Preparedness Month: Is Your Community Ready to Respond to a Severe Weather Event or Emergency?

National Fire Protection Association

While the warmer months of the year signal a time when we can indulge in vacations, beach days, and outdoor activities, the summer and fall are also when hurricanes, thunderstorms, wildfires, and other potential natural disasters make their impressive mark across many areas of the United States, often disrupting the rhythm of our daily lives.

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State of the Nation - a UK Perspective on Covid-19

Emergency Planning

Since the start of the crisis, I have constantly affirmed that the key to understanding the effects of this pandemic is the UK Government's failure to give adequate weight to emergency planning and management (Alexander 2020a, 2020b). There were major exercises on pandemics in 2005, 2007 and 2016. Exercise Cygnus Report.

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Can we stop the rot in academia?

Emergency Planning

Those who make the transition from intellectual activity to administration are precipitated into a system that enthusiastically applies principles and techniques that were tried out in business half a century ago and rapidly abandoned because they failed to improve the performance of companies.

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Covid-19: An Address

Emergency Planning

The Covid-19 pandemic ought to teach us the importance of both preparedness and social participation. With regard to preparedness, emergency response consists of planned activities, standardised procedures and improvisation. However, it is not exactly easy to organise an alternative system in the thick of the emergency.