There was a plan.  In fact, there were many plans, tested and stressed, if and when a catastrophic health emergency emerged.

Every government agency that could be even peripherally involved in any such crisis had a plan just in case something like COVID happened.

Like those plans, there are plans, right now, everywhere, in case of fire.

Think back to your school days, and you will remember the fire drills, the method of evacuation, the exhortations to stay calm, and the place to go after you were out of the building — second-graders to the jungle gym, third-graders to the kickball field, etc.

You may have even had a plan for how your family should best evacuate your house or apartment in case of a fire.  Stay low, remember where the emergency ladders are, don’t use the elevator, leave your stuffed animals behind, meet at the big tree down the street, etc.

Hopefully you never had to follow the plan in an emergency, but if you did, you had some idea from the outset as to what was supposed to happen and how to stay safe.

Now imagine that you were in school, and this panicked announcement from the principal blared over the intercom:

We are experiencing a fire-related event. Please pay attention and follow these instructions.

Kindergarten: Stay exactly where you are.

First grade: Move quickly out of the building and stand in the middle of the road in front of the school.

Second grade: Climb out of the window, whichever floor you are on.

Third grade: Go to the roof immediately.

Fourth grade: Bring your desks to the cafeteria and wait for further instructions.

Fifth grade: Pick up the gas cans we just placed outside your classrooms and bring them to the basement.

Sixth grade: Go from room to room and scream at the younger children to do exactly what I just said.  If you don’t remember what I said, just scream.

And that is exactly what happened when COVID left the lab in Wuhan.  Every government — save Sweden, which for the most part stuck with its original plan — went with the “alternate” “plan.”

Officials at every level looked at the pandemic plans they had been working on for years and — facing politics and panic and pharma and pressure and preposterous prognostications and the Deep State and experts on the make and the lure of easy power and groups that had things to hide — just started screaming, “Go to the roof!”

And after the school burned down, the principal said staff did the best they could, they just didn’t really know, they worked with the information they had, they had good intentions...and, by the way, we need more money to rebuild the school...and to pay for those funerals we didn’t cause.

And they wonder why no one trusts the principal anymore.

Thomas Buckley is the former mayor of Lake Elsinore, Calif. and a former newspaper reporter.  He is currently the operator of a small communications and planning consultancy and can be reached directly at planbuckley@gmail.com.  You can read more of his work at his Substack page.

Image: kolyaeg via Pixabay, Pixabay License.