Misguided Responses to Public Health Emergencies

This chapter considers some misguided responses to public health emergencies, or perceived emergencies. At one extreme was the arrest and lifetime confinement in Hawaii and elsewhere of sufferers from leprosy, or Hansen’s disease. This, of course, was not an example of presidential policy, but is included as an example of horrible overreach. An opposite approach was the refusal of the Eisenhower administration to mount a vaccination program to deal with the Asian flu pandemic of 1957. President Eisenhower was devoted to private solutions to such emergencies, and these were manifestly inadequate. There was yet another extreme example of a misguided approach, and that was President Woodrow Wilson’s militant passivity to the 1918 influenza pandemic. Disregarding advice from medical consultants, he refused to discontinue the shipment of troops abroad to fight in the Great War, which resulted in an even greater spread of the contagion because of the great numbers of men confined to small quarters aboard ships. Incompetence can always be a danger in public health emergencies. Although this was not a pandemic, the George W. Bush administration handled the health crisis caused by Hurricane Katrina so poorly that it became a national scandal. On the other hand, President Bush did move to plan wisely for a possible influenza pandemic when he ordered the creation of national stockpiles of antiviral medication.