The December 2020 Special COVID Issue of Homeland Security Affairs features eleven essays which chronicle agency and jurisdictional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the lessons learned thus far. The essays focus on how agencies or jurisdictions changed their operations to deal more effectively with the pandemic, as well as how the conditions of the pandemic constrained normal agency operations. Read more.
This article argues that the coronavirus pandemic represents a global intelligence failure on the part of the traditional intelligence community as well as the national and international medical intelligence and surveillance systems designed to detect and prevent outbreaks just such as this one.
By Erik Dahl
The problem being considered is the potential for Russian malign foreign influence to exploit the divides exacerbated by the coronavirus and target the United States and its European allies during the period leading to the 2020 elections and beyond.
By Wesley R. Moy and Kacper Gradon
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health community faces the delicate balancing act of preserving public health by containing the outbreak, while at the same time insuring that individual health information remains protected.
By Christopher Whiting
This essay offers an intermediate discussion of select policy, strategic, operational, and tactical issues that demonstrate where and how the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s novel coronavirus response on the one hand, and homeland security frameworks and research on the other, converge or—more often so—diverge, and how to narrow this gap.
By Alexander Siedschlag
Elected executives are going to have to exert crisis leadership using the role of navigator as communities yearn for a new normal yet the virus’ rampage continues.
By David Schuld
When dealing with stealth threats, there is no instinctive approach that can relate the facts of today to the consequences of tomorrow. Preparing for, and responding to, stealth threats requires a commitment to validated science-based models that predict the impact of the threat.
By Thomas J. Mackin
This essay explores the status of a COVID-19 vaccination campaign from a distribution perspective or in the context of the Incident Command System, the Logistics Section.
By Thomas Russo
The Covid-19 pandemic both upended the day-to-day workings of U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) and presented an opportunity to reexamine where policy and practice impede future productivity.
By Michael S. Locke
As the Coast Guard seeks short-term ways to protect its members from COVID-19 exposure and long-term strategies to facilitate the development of a more resilient workforce, wearables may provide a supplemental advantage worth their financial investment, though more study is necessary to validate their utility toward that end.
By Matthew S. Austin
Since Hurricane Katrina, military emergency managers have warned that military guidance does not adequately inform National Guard employment in large-scale, nationally significant disasters. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned this hypothetical assertion into a practical shortcoming.
By Paul Jara
