It's hard to remember now.

But back before anyone knew what a coronavirus was, we had plans for what to do if one emerged.

It wasn't a complete plan.

It wasn't even one single plan.

More like a lot of little plans, state by state, hospital by hospital.

But doctors were imagining a moment like this one.

So a number of years ago, well over a decade ago, there was the H1N1 flu pandemic, if you remember that.

Sherry Fink reports for the New York Times.

It was a flu strain that people were afraid was going to be the next big and bad pandemic.

Sherry says this H1N1 flu.

It's where a lot of pandemic plans got started, mostly because physicians realized that they

dodged a bullet.

They realized that if there were ever a really bad outbreak, particularly of a virus that affects the respiratory system, that even though the U.S. has an enviable health care system, has a lot of resources, it's very advanced, that we could run out.

And once they started making these plans, doctors realized there were an awful lot of things they could run out of.

They even started using a little mnemonic for thinking about all the resources that could be drained.

It went like this, staff, stuff, and space.

These are the three components and that there's a typical standard by which we get care.

And then in a crisis like this where there are so many more people needing those resources,

the staff, stuff, and the space, that the standard of care would not

necessarily meet what we're used to. And so there was this recognition, wow, we better plan

for this. What do we do? And the answer to that question was these plans. I imagine them

sitting around in a dusty three-ring binder. But Cherry says,

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