The US Pandemic Response

Former Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, and former Secretary of Health and Human Services discuss the US pandemic response. Overshadowed in recent years by the threat of transnational terrorism, biosecurity has returned in the era of Covid-19 to the forefront of our concerns. To better understand the perils of pandemic disease and the burdens such threats impose upon multiple scales of government, the two former Secretaries will discuss the Obama administration's management of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. What did decision makers get right in 2009-2010, and what did they get wrong? How was the threat contained, and what might the lessons of their experience have to teach us about how to manage future pandemics, especially when contrasted with the management of the 2020-21 Covid-19 pandemic?