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sidereaI have lost an article I read and wanted to cite, and I'm wondering if any of you either have it or can help me find it.
It was in writen form, and I read it early in the present pandemic. I think very early on (Jan, Feb, or March), definitely before the end of May. Internal contents I remember suggest early March at the latest.
It was in the form of an interview (printed in dialog), and I thought it was an interview with John Barry. Unfortunately, John Barry, the author of The Great Influenza, was the single most desireable interview subject in the English-speaking world for that time span, and gave a lot of interviews, and then those interviews he gave were often multiply reprinted all over the internet.
It is also possible that I am confused about which expert on the Spanish Flu it was who was interviewed, and that it was someone other than John Barry.
In any event, the specific interview I want discusses something I haven't seen in all the other interviews of his I've turned up. It describes how, under a previous US administration, the interviewee, who was an academic and expert on the Spanish Flu, was invited to a pandemic preparedness simulation exercise being run in the US. I seem to recall it happened in southern California. In the interview, he discusses what he did there and what the results were.
(conuly, I thought I got the link from you, but I've been trying to brute force your link lists and haven't found it.)
It was in writen form, and I read it early in the present pandemic. I think very early on (Jan, Feb, or March), definitely before the end of May. Internal contents I remember suggest early March at the latest.
It was in the form of an interview (printed in dialog), and I thought it was an interview with John Barry. Unfortunately, John Barry, the author of The Great Influenza, was the single most desireable interview subject in the English-speaking world for that time span, and gave a lot of interviews, and then those interviews he gave were often multiply reprinted all over the internet.
It is also possible that I am confused about which expert on the Spanish Flu it was who was interviewed, and that it was someone other than John Barry.
In any event, the specific interview I want discusses something I haven't seen in all the other interviews of his I've turned up. It describes how, under a previous US administration, the interviewee, who was an academic and expert on the Spanish Flu, was invited to a pandemic preparedness simulation exercise being run in the US. I seem to recall it happened in southern California. In the interview, he discusses what he did there and what the results were.
(
conuly, I thought I got the link from you, but I've been trying to brute force your link lists and haven't found it.)
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-17 06:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-17 07:34 am (UTC)Huh! Good to know.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-17 08:37 am (UTC)M
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-17 08:59 am (UTC)Of note, over the course of the John Barry interviews from Feb-May, one can observe his increasing bitterness and appall (as one might with most of us), e.g.: The article I remember was tonally quite different, in that the government hadn't quite so obviously (at least not so as the public could tell) started screwing up so badly yet, so it was more, "Gosh, I have some important information for government spokes people about how to handle this! Don't screw it up the way they did in the exercise!" than, "Hegel was right".
Thank you for giving it a crack!
P.S. It was also notably more loquacious than other interviews. He volunteered how surprised he was to be invited to the exercise, what with him being a historian, and how he was asked to give an address to the participants, sort of a keynote address before it started, and what he told them.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-17 09:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-17 09:20 am (UTC)Update: The Smithsonian article is here and in that he referred to a "war game" in LA. That term led me to these news articles:
* NYT, March
* Business Insider, April
* WaPo, March, building on the NYT
Hope those help; I see different names for the exercise.