The title sounds worse than it is. What's really going on is that the state of California is writing a disaster preparedness (or -reaction) manual, outlining scenario after scenario and what will have to be done with the impaired logistics and limited resources available after a massive earthquake, pandemic outbreak, or other massive disaster.
From the SacBee:
It provides for scenarios in which patients could be herded into school gymnasiums for life-saving care or animal doctors could stitch up the human wounded and set their broken bones.The 1,900-page document lays the practical – and ethical – groundwork for local and county health departments, hospitals, emergency responders and any able-bodied health care worker likely to be called upon in a catastrophe.
Striking in its specificity and its frank focus on the need to suspend or flex established laws and to ration health care, the plan is being hailed as a model for the rest of the nation.
"I don't know of any state that has taken it to this level of detail in outlining a surge plan for everyone who needs to respond to an emergency of this magnitude," said Jeff Levi, executive director of Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit group that has criticized the nation's emergency preparedness. "It's exactly the kind of dialogue that has to happen."
The conversations emerging from the plan will be very painful, especially for professionals trained to save a life at almost any cost, said Betsey Lyman, deputy director for public health emergency preparedness at the state Department of Public Health.
It's pretty standard stuff, basically -- it just looks bad on paper, and is tough to think about. However, as the Boy Scouts always say (sorry to compare you to the eeevil Scouts, government of California! ;-), it's almost always better to Be Prepared.