Tuesday, October 30, 2007

AZ Drive Thru Vax Update, Drills, SAIC, + AEI Report

Chandler AZ "Drive Thru Clinic" (update) *Americans are so stupid, they'd line up to help test
the Guillotine
Nurses administer free flu shots through car windows Saturday during the drive-though flu shot drill at Chandler Regional Medical Center.

Mike StephensThe Arizona RepublicOct. 30, 2007 12:59 PM

Chandler Regional Medical Center's flu shot drill Saturday was a hit with residents and considered a success by officials testing the hospital's ability to respond to a bioterror or other mass medical emergency.Cars began lining up for the free drive-though vaccinations as early as 6 a.m. even though the start time wasn't scheduled until 7:30 a.m., said hospital spokeswoman Kimberly Day. The clinic included 100 hospital personnel and 60 city employees, including police in full tactical gear who, in a real emergency, likely would be required to maintain order (or force a needle in your arm at gunpoint....)
"They treated this like it was a real scenario so they dressed up in their gear," Day said. The hospital administered 1,266 flu vaccine doses through 11 a.m., going beyond the scheduled 1,000 shots planned because of strong demand. Day said lessons learned were to add more screeners farther back in the line and have hospital staff show up earlier to deal with early birds."Otherwise the whole drill went extremely smoothly," she said. Gilbert Mercy Medical Center will have a similar free drive-though clinic from 8-11 a.m. Nov. 10 but it won't include a police drill.
Drill prepared county for mass medical emergency CO
Exercise gave hospitals, emergency responders chance to practice for major incident
What if local emergency responders and hospitals suddenly had to handle an onslaught of scores of people injured at the same time due to a major traffic accident, fire, riot, chemical incident or even a terrorist attack?
All five Boulder County hospitals teamed up with Boulder County Public Health (BCPH), Pridemark Paramedics, CU, Volunteer Connection, the County Coroner, Boulder Fire, The Sheriff's Office, and the Office of Emergency Management onOct. 27to practice how they would respond to an incident with multiple victims and deaths. (cont..)
Portland to host pandemic flu drill CT
SAIC Awarded Contracts from U.S. Department of Homeland Security to Implement Cargo Scanning Technology
SAN DIEGO and MCLEAN, Va., Oct. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Science Applications International Corporation today announced orders totaling $33 million received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to implement cargo scanning technology in the U.S. and abroad.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20071030/NETU011 )
The technology, which includes SAIC's vanguard VACIS(R) P7500 X-ray inspection system, will help DHS authorities scan high volumes of cargo containers for weapons, explosives and other threats before they enter U.S. borders in support of the Secure Freight Initiative.
SAIC's VACIS(R) P7500 system produces high-resolution digital images of the contents of containers for online analysis. A single system can scan up to 150 containers per hour with minimal impact on the flow of commerce. (cont..)

A Dangerous Opportunity (AEI Report PERP Publication)
American Defense Policy at a Crossroads
October 2007
America's military policy is in disarray, but not for the reason most people think. For the first time since around 1950, there is no coherent theoretical framework for thinking about how to shape our armed forces for current and future threats. This fact presents both a danger and an opportunity. The danger is that we will either fail to develop one and therefore drift aimlessly at a troubled time, or that we will reach back to some of the tattered remnants of the theories that guided military policy until 2007. But we now have the opportunity for a serious discussion about the shape of the world today and its likely shape tomorrow.
From 1950 to 1991, American military policy was fundamentally shaped by the nature of a specific enemy--the Soviet Union. As Soviet thought and action--both of which we watched closely, if never completely accurately--changed, our military policy changed. When Nikita Khrushchev made it clear that he was going to encourage revolutionary movements around the Third World, John F. Kennedy created the Special Forces to train indigenous armies to resist them. As the Soviets moved toward nuclear parity, the Air Force and the RAND Corporation developed a sophisticated (which is not the same as reasonable) nuclear strategy in response. In some cases, the action/reaction was remarkably swift. Army doctrine was revolutionized completely in 1976 based on a careful reading of Soviet doctrine of the time. But the Soviets changed their doctrine (or, at least, our understanding of their doctrine changed), and by 1982, the Army had revolutionized its doctrine once again. A lot of other things went into shaping American military policy and the armed forces, of course, but military leaders during the Cold War were never at a loss for how to start thinking about the problem: look at the enemy, figure out what he can or might do, and figure out how to respond to it.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to confusion and frustration among American military theorists. There was much hand-wringing about the challenges of designing a military policy, national security strategy, and force structure without having any clear enemy. A solid effort to do so was conducted by then-secretary of defense Dick Cheney and his under secretary of defense for policy, Paul Wolfowitz. They produced the Regional Defense Strategy, which attempted to continue to develop military policy on the basis of concrete geopolitical realities, but this effort died with the waning of the first Bush administration.[1] (cont..)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I work for the City of Edmond and was involved in the emergency exercise. It wasn't terrorism-related. We have railroad tracks that run through the middle of our city so the simulation was a train derailment with a haz mat spill. No terrorism aspect - just exercising our response plans for an emergency that could actually happen in our city. That gives a chance to test our training and find any weaknesses rather than find them during a real emergency.