jazzdude

I think all army officers go to their respective Captain's Career Course (SOS level PME) based on their branch. My understanding was their IDE and SDE equivalents were competitive. The Army also seems to be a lot more competitive to LTC, where if they don't make it, they'll be out on the street. Navy also seemed to be that way as well, if you didn't screen for department head, getting to 20 and retirement gets much more difficult.

Well, they (medical professionals) don't have the authority to do much. Only advise our elected officials, who in turn can take the advice and act, or ignore it, and everything in between. I guess they can triage patients if space/supplies runs low, but that's driven by the demand for medical services. If the executives (president, governors, etc) are overstepping their bounds, the legislatures or judicial branches need to step in and intervene. A lot has changed in our society since the Constitution was written. Not saying the underlying principles necessarily need to change, but there are a lot of problems that didn't exist or weren't fully understood during the founding father's times, and it should be cause for us to reexamine as a country what we value and believe in. Germ theory was still in it's infancy when the Constitution was written, and they didn't have an understanding of what caused diseases and how they are spread like we do now. Couple that with rapid global transportation, and the ability for the average person to hop in their car and be a 1000 miles away in a day, and diseases can spread much further and faster than before. On the flip side, it's never been easier to communicate and spread ideas. Way back then, press and assembling was the only real way to spread ideas and dissenting opinions, and why I think it's codified in the bill of Rights. Now, we have the ability to organize and spread ideas digitally; what role does press and assembling play now? So how do we balance individual liberty against the liberty of others, and the needs of our society as a whole? Is access to medical care a right, and if so, where is the line drawn for what is or isn't covered, and how is it funded? We need to have this discussion as a country, to reassess what we value and what our core beliefs are, and how to implement those beliefs and values. Lots of other things as well, like the reach and oversight of our intelligence community, the role and use of our military overseas, how to build and more importantly maintain critical infrastructure (and what things fall under critical infrastructure), etc. It's not an easy task, but we need to elect leaders who will work through these core issues on behalf of their constituency. Should be an interesting election year given all the craziness so far, and hopefully we can get past partisan politics to solve these issues.

My (uneducated) takeaway of the economic impact this pandemic has had is that maybe our economy hasn't really been healthy for a while. Lots of businesses over leveraged and carrying too much debt at the expense of short term gains.

Here's a question to ponder (I don't have a right or wrong answer, btw), as the LIMFAC with this seems to be healthcare capacity: How do we triage medical treatment? How do we pick who gets access to the hospital and who doesn't? We can surge healthcare resources indefinitely. Do we tell everyone over say 70 that "you've lived a long life" and we are directing limited resources to younger patients? Or do we give them preference because they've "paid their dues to society" and should be taken care of in their old age? Do we do the same for people with terminal diseases ("treatment at best buys you another year, so we're going to treat someone younger or with a longer life expectancy")? What about non terminal diseases? Does it make a difference if a disease is genetic, or from a lifestyle choice? Or does none of this matter, and if you can afford to pay for a bed, you should get priority over someone who can't pay or can only pay less than you're willing? Quarantine and these drastic measures buy us time to plus up medical capacity, and start figuring out how to "best" utilize those resources. But there's no right answer, and in the end some group is not going to have access.

This article points to higher use/lose balance being considered (as well as extending the stop-movement order) https://www.airforcemag.com/goldfein-military-movement-ban-expected-to-be-extended/ "Because people cannot travel, Goldfein said a decision is coming in the next two weeks that could let Airmen carry those days into 2021." Hopefully it gets approved. I'm sitting on 30 days of use/lose that I had planned to use for a post deployment vacation and to visit family, but now that's on hold.

Guys, it's not hard. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, stay home if you can. If you have to go out, stay 6 feet away from people/social distance if possible, and wear a mask in order to reduce/slow transmission of the virus. The mask is for those around you, in case you have the virus and are contagious but not yet symptomatic. Keep your mask clean, change it out when it gets moist. Assume it's dirty when you take it off, so wash your hands. That goes for cloth masks, n95 respirators, surgical masks, bandannas, etc. If you are sick, stay home. These are the TTPs we have right now, hopefully we can get more research into it and industry to move on a future solution to enable better TTPs.

A low Pk virus stopper mask generally is better than doing nothing (unless you never wash the stupid thing, then it's probably going to be worse). Plus a mask is less for protecting you against what's out there, and more to keep whatever you have from spreading to others. Flip side is a respirator (like the N95s) are made to keep stuff out and protect you. So wearing a (cloth) mask in public is more for protecting those around you than for protecting yourself (last resort PPE), and keeping N95 and other respirators free for high risk professionals (medical, first responders, etc) who are in close contact with multiple people who are suspected/known to have the virus. ETA: "CDC also advises the use of simple cloth face coverings to slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html

Based on the memo, it seems it's only required for when you can't maintain the 6 feet social distancing. Though CDC is recommending 6 feet plus the mask

MOPP gear for all my friends...

My uneducated opinion? The next event based trigger probably would be X ventilators on hand, plans to surge ICU and in-patient care (alternate locations and staffing), and rebuild our stock of PPE for medical workers. At least rebuilding the stock of PPE should allow at least outpatient surgeries/procedures to resume. However, the supply chains seem to have taken a big hit, with a lot of production happening overseas, and producing countries holding on to their production to help at home first before exporting. I've got family in the medical field. My brother (anesthesiologist), said his hospital has already gone from changing their respirator for every patient (prior to the whole COVID-19 problem) to "here's your one respirator, keep it in your locker when you go home, make it last as long as you can." And that's across the board at his hospital, not just for COVID-19 patients, and there's no approved procedure to sterilize/disinfect the respirator (since it's supposed to be a one time use item). It'd be like the AF saying "OBOGS is good, there's only a small risk of physiological incidents, so press on..." except grounding the fleet is off the table, there can be no safety stand down, and in fact, ops tempo is expected to surge for the foreseeable future, crew rest is waived, so suck it up. A nurse catching COVID-19 means they're out for 14-30 days, and each day they are out means 6-10 patients that day can't be supported (or 2-3 ICU patients). I'd imagine the number is roughly the same for doctors. So keeping them healthy (through triage, deferring care that can be deferred, and proper PPE) keeps them in the fight, not just for COVID, but for any procedure that can't be deferred. Right now, we are just delaying the big fight until we can mass our forces appropriately. However, just like in war, it doesn't really matter if we win battles now if we don't have the logistical support to sustain the fight and win the war. So hopefully we are using this time now to appropriately mass our resources and not get caught with our pants down when the fighting starts in earnest.

My understanding is that pushing it to the right has been (and still is) the goal, i.e. Flattening the curve so limited health care resource's aren't overwhelmed. If done right, it hopefully buys us time to ramp up medical capacity (including equipment like ventilators and PPE for medical workers) and increasing the availability of testing, and allowing relaxing how aggressive we are with social distancing/staying home when you aren't sick/reopening businesses, etc. Then again, this assumes Congress, the president, and the state governors working together quickly to ease the burden on the general population.

That seems to be the challenge with this, not enough testing combined with a long incubation period where one could be infected/contagious before feeling sick and getting tested, which leads to the disease spreading. As for being smart about it, it's why we can't have nice things. Lots of people out there aren't. Why not throw a block party? It's you're right to do what you want. I'm in a locked down state (NJ). Still allowed to go out and run, leave the house, etc. But pretty much asked to avoid going out of you don't have to, and to not gather in large groups. If the general public voluntarily stays in and minimizes going out except for essentials, we won't need heavy handed laws or executive orders to force it. But I'm not going to hold my breath.

Definitely agree on sunset provisions. The authority to quarantine is in law, activated by executive order. So in theory the other branches of government should act as the check/balance. But then again, Congress has been gridlocked for the better part of the decade, so, yeah.

There's a balance between individual liberties and the needs of a functioning society. Generally, you have the full right to pursue life/liberty/happiness, so long as you aren't infringing on the right of others to pursue life/liberty/happiness. A lot of the measures being implemented now for covid-19 are similar to the measures implemented during 1918 Spanish flu. So there's already precedent, and we've gotten through it. Also, the laws allowing quarantine are already on the books, and have been for almost a century. What seems to be different is that long distance travel was much harder than it is now. People aren't staying home if they are sick, which is spreading the disease much faster. On one hand, the right to individual liberty says that an infected/contagious person should be able to do whatever they want. On the other hand, an infected/contagious person spreading disease negatively impacts the right to life and happiness of other people if they are given the disease. So where is the balance? Where should the line be drawn to balance individual liberties against the liberty/life of others?

So why are CDC and WHO recommending/advising different than him? Also realize that just like pilots, doctors specialize. So I'd rather defer to an infectious disease specialist or an epidemiologist at the WHO or CDC than a general/oncology surgeon.

Don't forget that a strat lift platform (C-17 or C-5) will typically fly trips. These trips can be short, or long, and everything in between. 3-21 days. 5-14 days is probably the most realistic trip length.

The biggest challenge seems to be getting a vaccine. As mentioned earlier, even if the mortality rate is in the 2-3%, anybody hospitalized for covid-19 takes a bed that can't be used for someone else that needs it (think heart attack, car accident, stroke, etc). Alternatively, if the spread of the disease is slowed, we as a society build up a herd immunity while staying within our healthcare capacity. The argument for lifting the quarantine/self isolation right now is the same that anti vaxxers use-it's my choice, the rest of society be damned, and the disease isn't too bad.

AMD has some wiggle room, but generally what they carry is validated and prioritized by CENTCOM for movement. Part of the problem is that many times either: your loggies have failed you (didn't build the requirement), or your unit hasn't communicated what you need to the loggies (bad requirements), or the loggies haven't communicated the business rules/what can be reasonable expected (bad communication). All the services are guilty of this, but it seems to be worst with AFCENT because they seem to think "we own the cargo airlift, so we can do whatever with them." Stuff can move very fast, it just has to be a real COCOM/CC priority, not just a service component or unit priority. The biggest spear I have for the CAF is that their logistics is often an afterthought, and that it's unreasonable to expect you'll always be the top movement priority. This problem becomes even bigger if we were to get into a real shooting war with a near peer.

If only there was someone in charge of a unit that could determine if it's reasonable or not based on the unique mission of the unit and make allowances for the circumstances at hand in conjunction with general guidance from the HAF, instead of having an inflexible blanket policy for the entire Air Force... I've worked plenty of weekends/holidays where I was told by the scheduler that I was doing it because I was single and it didn't matter if I was home or not. Happy to do my duty I signed up for, but when I get tagged three weekends in a row for a weekend duty that's supposed to rotate across everyone in the squadron just because I don't have kids, or told I'm on the holiday trip because it doesn't matter if I'm home, it sucks. On the flip side, I've generally been able to take (non-chargeable) time off when I needed it. Things like taking the car in for service, leaving work early for a personal errand/event, etc when the mission allowed. That's not something that's universal across the military service, and I'm grateful that most of my commanders have been lenient on office hours.

I think this is probably the heart of this argument. It's the whole "God, Family, Country" thing-different people will put those three things in different orders, and because of that, there will always be debate. For some that are considered religious, it may be more of a tradition than a deeply seated belief, so the sacrifice is easy. For others, religion may be more important than patriotism, and it may be enough to force them out of the service or skip volunteering in the first place; they believe they are already a part of something bigger, and more important, than their country. It's in the same vein is the BAH argument: why should someone with dependents get paid more than a single person of the same rank for the same work? Same with family separation pay. Not saying those should go away, but it's definitely not the same standard across the board for everyone of the same rank, so it's not "fair" to all service members (particularly the single people). As much as people like to say "country first," it's never that easy. We've all signed up for something bigger than just ourselves, but that doesn't mean it's our number one priority (at least not all the time). Just look at the healthy contingent of guardsmen and reservists in this forum. There are some AD folks that look down on the part timers as less patriotic, who are not able to fully commit themselves to their country (thankfully that attitude has been dying off, probably because retention isn't where it needs to be). However, it's great that we have a way for people to serve on a part time basis-it allows us to recruit and retain people in the service that are unable or unwilling to commit to full time active duty service. It works out to be a win-win: the AF retains trained people it can call up for way at a fraction of the cost of maintaining them on active duty, and the individual gets the flexibility to pursue other goals/priorities (personal, family, etc). BL is that it's easy to tell others to make personal sacrifices when our own personal values don't see those sacrifices as hard choices or important. Institutionally, the AF is now saying it will make reasonable accommodations where it can, because it sees value in retaining those people requesting the accommodations, and that the benefit out weighs the cost. Don't like it? Well, call your congressman to change the law.

So I'm sure that you only wear your flightsuit when stepping to fly, and OCPs/ABUs when you are mission planning or doing office duties. After all, that's the AF "standard.". Or 2 piece flightsuits for all friends, but Bose your boots when you're not flying like army aviation does. Not saying we should do any of that, just pointing out that even with our daily uniforms it isn't standard, and aircrew are the exception. Plus it doesn't matter what any of us think. As a federal agency, we're required to make reasonable accommodations for religious beliefs, and it looks like the AF is implementing it

What about different standards for different ages? Literally discriminating on age averages... Does it impact mission? If not, then why do you care so much? I can see a single standard for physical jobs like infantry, but there are so many other military jobs where it just doesn't really matter, so who cares? Just meet your standard and move on.

What detriment? Don't know about you, but about the most physically demanding thing I've done in my career is bag drags on/off the jet. There's plenty of jobs in a modern milliary where running faster/lifting heavier isn't really necessary to do your job well.

What medical specialty? If you're a doctor, might be worth looking into the pilot-physician career path

Yeah, I don't know, but I've made my peace with it. Got some great advice from my then Group CC, that I've taken to heart. Straight up told that I probably wouldn't get an opportunity to command (wasn't really gunning for it anyways, and that wasn't a surprise anyways), but because of that, I don't have the pressure to play the game, so go out and find what makes me happy and do it. If I want to just fly, just do it, the pilot shortage isn't getting better. If I want to get out, the airlines are hiring. If I want to do something else, shoot for it without worrying about career progression. Lots of options still out there. And that mindset has given me some great opportunities since. I've found little niches where I can make make my corner of the AF a better place doing something I enjoy, so it ends up being a win-win for me and the AF. If I retire as a major, great, I went out doing what I liked to do. If I make lt col, great, that retirement paycheck will be bigger. My self worth doesn't rely on what's on my shoulders.