What do we do with that army of doctors, nurses and paramedics in non-pandemic times? Do we stick them in a deep freeze, ready to thaw out with a few hours notice? Perhaps put them in suspended animation?
In reality, the medical reservists (doctors, nurses and paramedics in the military) are almost certainly doing the same work in the civilian work when not needed for active deployment. So activating them takes them away from the places where they are needed.
Pay them to be prepared. Isn’t that what we mostly do with soldiers in peacetime?
That’s massively expensive with any reward later at an uncertain time. In another thread, someone linked to an article that talked about the preparations that George W Bush tried to make for a pandemic, and there too, it was hard to sustain the funding over time and changes in administration.
Although, ideally, we could have a uniformed team of medical personnel whose primary purpose is pandemic response, but the rest of the time they could be deployed to disaster zones throughout the world or could be deployed to poor parts of the US to treat uninsured civilians.
And we could provide government subsidies to medical personnel, so we can have more of them employed than can be sustained by market forced during normal times. Perhaps also provide cross-training, so more medical personnel have the skills that are needed during medical emergencies (trauma, infectious diseases, etc).
Medical professions are generally well-paid, so I’m not sure how providing government subsidies to such people is going to get public approval.
Then the public have no right to complain about overrun hospitals during pandemics and natural disasters.
Finally a correct answer!
Federal government military cannot operate within the U.S. or be deployed against civilians unless there is a clear insurrection or other defined circumstances. Country wide martial law declared by the president. This is to prevent a dictatorship take over.
Can you imagine the shit storm if our current president were to use federal troops within the US?
Why don’t they just be doctors during non-emergency times, and doctors during emergency times?
I mean, there’s a reason why many warfighters are only warfighters during wartime. During peacetime, there isn’t really a call for warfighters at all, so it’s reasonable for some of them to have peacetime jobs.
But to the OP: I really think the military and National Guard is being under-utilized in this crisis, but the main reason is that there is no real organizational principle or concept behind this country’s response.
If, for example, the US had determined early on that we would conduct extensive testing to quickly isolate those carrying the disease, and set up testing centers all over the place,we would probably see widespread use of the National Guard at those testing centers, to manage traffic, help move supplies, and so on.
You’d also see operations centers much more extensively manned at every level of government, so the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. It looks like now, FEMA and HHS are basically flying blind in terms of where to allocate the national stockpile of PPE, so the Guard could help organize and move those supplies.
But we don’t really have an organized strategy. The fact that so many governors had to decide whether and when to close down gatherings and business is evidence of that. And so we have thousands of Guardsmen doing that in New York and a small number of other states. And other states have much fewer than 100 Guard troops doing anything.
And the National Guards of various states are doing more than that- some states have them stocking shelves at stores, while others have them working shifts manufacturing masks.
Most of the active-duty military people who probably aren’t being utilized don’t have much in the way of pertinent skills. I mean, what exactly is a USMC infantry Lance Corporal going to be trained to do that’s useful? Blow stuff up? Shoot stuff?
At best, we could utilize the National Guards to do stuff like coordinate testing- traffic control, etc… and those would mostly be MP units anyway. Again, what is a tank company going to be able to do? Or an anti-aircraft battalion? Or an artillery battery?
The issue isn’t so much manpower, it’s coordination. And it’s not like the coordination isn’t happening because of coordination problems, it’s because there’s no efforts to coordinate from the top. In other words, there’s no “Coronavirus Czar” who’s *actually *working to coordinate all this. Pence is supposed to be doing it, but we haven’t heard a damned peep out of him lately relative to all the other noise we hear from other people in the executive branch.
US-style warfare to handle COVID? Sure! If we use a Predator drone to launch Hellfire missiles into a few wedding parties, I guarantee people would get the message about proper social distancing.
”I’m starting to like the cut of this man’s gibberish!” — The Tick
Stranger
Which is exactly how the Spanish Armey is being used, in fact. They’re setting up field hospitals and “transit places”, setting up military equipment to house the homeless in the kind of locations often used to home people in a disaster (covered sports facilities, covered business-fair grounds), disinfecting locations, teaching people working in supermarkets about safety practices, etc.
But they’re used to doing disaster control; I’m not sure how much the US Army is accustomed to that.
Here, it’s being handled very like an American war. A few people are profiting off it, and the rest of us are keeping our heads down and trying to avoid it.
A few people are actually putting themselves in harm’s way for the cause. We try to ignore them.
Well, they’re perfectly capable of standing by the roadside and saying “You there, exiting your home, stop and go back inside. If you require emergency assistance please call 911. If you lack food or water I will arrange a delivery. Otherwise return to your home or I will shoot you.”
I’m not saying that’s a great idea or even necessary one at this point, I’m just giving you one answer to your question. Military personnel can perform many useful tasks that require no special abilities beyond looking scary, speaking words, and pulling triggers.
Upvote
A fellow physician friend of mine is in the Army Reserves, and her unit was activated and sent to Italy to help out.
I tend to think we could use that help more right now in NY and other locations domestically, but I am sure she’s out there saving lives, regardless.
I just hope she stays healthy.
A relatively small percentage of the Regular US Army is actually in the “blowing stuff up and shooting stuff” business. Most of it is actually in the business of running the massive logistics and support services need to deploy the “blow up and shoot stuff” guys anywhere in the world.
Plus I can think of a lot of situations where it might be useful to deploy something like a mechanized infantry company with a hundred+ disciplined, well organized people and their vehicles and equipment to provide assistance.