Reply to post: Re: playing with the politics of pandemics

'Following the science' rhetoric led to delay to UK COVID-19 lockdown, face mask rules

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: playing with the politics of pandemics

"I'd still like to see evidence of this magical NATIONAL 1970s *pandemic* plan where the army, wearing hazmat suits apparently, but not spreading any infection, would feed and test the entire nation for the N months whatever pandemic orgamism would take to clear from the population. I'd imagine in that picture the infected would be left to die (or army style open wards?)."

Not only that, but the army is a bit smaller these days. The army had a strength of about 373,000 in 1970 to 315,000 in 1979 so hard to say what the plan might have been since the army was reducing all through the decade. Currently, the army has 79,620 regulars; 29,980 Army Reserve, less than a 1/3rd the available in the early 1970s, and that's assuming all reservists are called up and all overseas troops are brought home. Any plan from the 70s would need a very significant revamp to be even barely workable 50 years later.

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