Does Lawrence Wein sleep well at night? Yes.
Will you, after you read about what he does for a living? Maybe not.
Since 9/11, the professor of operations management at Stanford’s business school has been advising the White House and Congress on how to prevent massive-scale attacks on U.S. soil.
So, what would America possibly experience if terrorists release an infectious disease and the government response is less than stellar? Hurricane Katrina, minus water, plus smallpox.
“All of these Homeland Security problems, they’re really operations problems. Just as McDonald’s has to get hamburgers out in a rapid, defect-free manner, so does Homeland Security have to distribute vaccines, antibiotics and check our borders for weapons in a rapid and defect-free manner,” said Wein, who will lecture on terror prevention Sunday, Sept. 11, at Palo Alto’s Congregation Etz Chayim, where he is a member. His talk is co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council.
“What you’re seeing in New Orleans,” Wein said, “this is an operations problem.”
And will the government learn its painful, deadly lesson?
“I’m not sure they will.”
Things might go more smoothly if the United States efficiently carries out the method to control a smallpox attack developed by Wein and Edward Kaplan, a Yale professor.
Prior to the professors’ work, the accepted government policy was to isolate a potential smallpox victim, interview him about all of the people he communicated with, track them down and do the same.
Such a method would be inconvenient, to say the least, if a terrorist cracked a few vials of smallpox in Union Square.
Kaplan’s approach is marvelously simple: Inoculate everyone in the city. And, if inoculating a major metropolis sounds impossible, Wein noted that, after seven cases of smallpox were reported in New York City in 1948, the government was able to vaccinate a million people a day.
The professors’ proposal made sense to the Israelis, who approved it faster than you could say “bioterrorism.”
Wein’s smallpox suggestion was adopted as official U.S. policy, following administrative wrangl-
ing he chalks up to politics.
His suggestions could add another line to the mantra of the U.S. Postal Service: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor anthrax will stop the men and women in Bermuda shorts and white pith helmets. Wein and Kaplan recommend armed police escorts accompany postal workers as they deliver anthrax vaccines to an infected city, door-to-door.
Wein’s work on botulism in the milk supply highlights his unusual relationship with the U.S. government. While he is seen as a nonpolitical adviser, the professor has proven to be more than willing to criticize the government’s action — or inaction.
When he penned an article for the National Academy of Sciences, the government stepped in and asked it not run. (The article ultimately did run.)
Similarly, he went public with an article pointing out that the fingerprinting system the United States uses for those entering the nation fails one time out of four. His input helped spur the government to switch from using two to 10 fingerprints in its ID system.
All things considered, Wein gives the government a mixed but mostly negative review on keeping Americans safer in the aftermath of 9/11.
“The government is a big place and all these problems are handled by different parts of it,” he said, noting that enough vaccine for every American has been stockpiled.
“Overall, I’d say they’re not doing well, and they’re trying to do a lot of this on the cheap.”
Lawrence Wein will speak from 3 p.m. to
5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, at Congregation Etz Chayim, 4161 Alma St., Palo Alto. Admission is free. Information: (650) 813-9094.