Department of Health Pandemic Plan Predicted Up To 50,000 Deaths
An Homage To IF Stone
No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon — into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile. – Condoleezza Rice, Testimony to 9/11 Commission
During our recent discussion of DEP climate programs, NJ Spotlight reporter David Cruz sent me a very nasty and revealing email, in terms of what he really thought about alternative media. Cruz wrote:
For all your public mouthing off on social media, I would think you’d have something intelligent to say. So far, a lot of bluster.
So, I’ll admit that I’ve been lying in ambush, just waiting to rattle his cage.
Today he gave me the opportunity to do so in his lame “Chat Box” interview with Murphy Department of Health Commissioner Persichilli about the latest on COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the state.
The interview opened with some “chat”, including joking around about the Commissioner’s night life. Of course, I was not amused. I could watch not much further.
But right out of the box, Commissioner Persichelli deployed the Bush administration’s big lie about 9/11: (at time 1:25, Persichilli said):
I started this job in August of 2019, and in 4-5 months we started monitoring what was going on in Wuhan. I don’t think any of us could have imagined what was in front of us. I certainly didn’t.
That is either a lie or total negligence at the NJ Department of Health.
The NJ Department of Health not only imagined a pandemic, they had a plan for it!
I served in NJ State government for many years and was part of a small team that briefed incoming DEP Commissioner Campbell in 2002.
Any new Commissioner receives detailed and comprehensive briefings from senior staff about critical issues, policies, plans and programs.
As I wrote back in March 2020, when COVID was first breaking out, the NJ Department of Health had a Pandemic Plan that predicted up to 50,000 deaths, see:
Did NJ DoH professionals brief the new incoming Commissioner on this Pandemic plan? If not, why not?
Why have no NJ media asked her this question?
I fired off this email to Cruz and his editor John McAlpin to try to get an answer.
I’m fairly certain I’ll get no reply:
Dave – you let Health Commissioner get away with the famous Bush administration lie about 9/11:
“no one could have imagined” something like COVID.
In fact, NJ DOH had a pandemic plan that estimated 50,000 people could die! SO did NJ Hazard Mitigation Plan.
In case you’re interested, us big mouth social media hippie bloggers provide links to official documents when we write to hold State officials accountable – and follow IF Stone’s dictum that the best info is always buried in Attachments at the end – instead of joking with them about their night life, see:
NJ State Officials Knew For Years That A Pandemic Could Cause Healthcare System To Collapse And 50,000 Residents Could Die
[End Note: That “something intelligent to say” attack is ironic, because I’ve found that journalists are some of the most poorly educated and incurious “professionals” I’ve come across. Many are downright anti-intellectual and hostile to intelligence.
Back in 1980, in an undergraduate History of Science course, we read William McNeil’s 1976 classic “Plagues and Peoples”. That course was popular among pre-meds and science majors, not because they were interested in history, but because they could check their “liberal arts” course degree requirements. We also read F. Braudel’s classic The Wheels Of Commerce. (some of us even took literature and philosophy courses – or dated women who did – and read writers like Camus’ The Plague.)
So, before the issue got relegated to the culture war, I learned that white European settlers had waged a genocidal war on indigenous peoples, including biological or germ warfare. I also was exposed, pun intended, to some basic concepts of epidemiology and public health. I was learning similar science in courses in biochemistry, ecology, and toxic chemicals.
So, over a decade later, I was not surprised by reading Laurie Garrett’s 1994 classic “The Coming Plague”.
Now I am not a public health expert, but these are classics in the field. They are elementary, basic foundations.
No doubt, the epidemiologists and public health experts at the NJ Department of Health have read them and far more on pandemic risks.
Yet, some hack like Dave Cruz can attack my lack of “something intelligent to say”.
And that pretty much sums up US media. ~~~ end]