'There is no surge plan': Despite warnings, Congress failed to fully fund pandemics bill

Public-health experts trooped to Capitol Hill in 2018 and 2019 to ask Congress to invest hundreds of millions of additional dollars in the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness act, testifying that many of the programs created after 9/11 to ready the nation’s health system for any kind of disaster had since been stripped down to dangerously low levels. The warnings were not heeded.