The DC Council created an expert advisory panel in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This year the mayor and council have agreed to kill the District’s Homeland Security Commission despite solid successes during its 20-year history.
Between 2020 and 2023 the Office of the DC Auditor published a dozen reports on the District’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of funding, data collection, policies and practices. Overall ODCA determined that the District managed the pandemic better than most states, with findings like:
- The District and neighboring states had among the earliest and most comprehensive policy responses to COVID-19.
- DC’s nursing homes experienced lower resident case and death rates in the late summer and early fall of 2020 relative to the national average.
These outcomes were not an accident. The District had strong leadership from Drs. LaQuandra Nesbitt and Roger Mitchell at the DC Department of Health and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, respectively.
And there were other factors.
In 2015, the District published A Look at the District’s Preparedness Level in Addressing a Potential Pandemic Incident. The report found that current resources “could be more efficiently used to improve pandemic planning and preparedness” and offered recommendations on funding and fund distribution, cross-agency coordination, crisis communication, and public-private information sharing. A major contributor to the report was Dr. Rebecca Katz, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security; she would later serve as a key pandemic adviser to Joseph Biden during his 2020 presidential campaign and tenure in the White House…