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50 Urb. Law. 401 (2019-2020)
The Pandemic and the Failure to Plan: We Can Do Better

handle is hein.journals/urban50 and id is 421 raw text is: 401 The Pandemic and the Failure to Plan: We Can Do Better Dwight Merriam I. The Disaster That Planners Failed to Anticipate As of December 22, 2020, more than 210 countries have experienced outbreaks of COVID-19, with 77.9 million cases worldwide, 18.5 million of these in the United States. There have been 1.7 million deaths worldwide. The United States has the most of any country: 324,954.1 And the crisis is not over. Indeed, as of December 23, 2020, it is worsening, with 3,362 deaths that day in the United States.2 At that rate, it is essentially as if every person in Kansas City, Mis- souri; or Oklahoma City; or Tucson; or Long Beach died in the next four to five months. That daily death toll, 3,362, is more than the number who died in the 9/11 attacks: 2,977. It is more in one day than all those who gave their lives in the opening day of the bloody D-Day invasion.3 Many have become utterly and foolishly numb to the numbers.4 *Dwight H. Merriam, FAICP (dwightmerriam@gmail.com), a lawyer and land use planner, is a Fellow in the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, a Fel- low and Past President and of the American Institute of Certified Planners, and Past Chair of the ABA Section of State and Local Government Law. He has pub- lished over 200 articles and 13 books, including co-editing the treatise Rathkopf's The Law of Zoning and Planning. UMass BA (cum laude), UNC MRP, and Yale JD. www.dwightmerriam.com. This article follows from a previously published article: Dwight Merriam, Pan- demic Planning, 4 J. COMP. URB. L. & POL'Y 70-81 (2020). 1. John Elflein, Coronavirus (COVID-19) disease pandemic Statistics & Facts, Statista (Dec. 16 and 22, 2020). https://www.statista.com/statistics/1043366 /novel-coronavirus-2019ncov-cases-worldwide-by-country/ 2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC COVID Data Tracker (Dec. 25, 2020). https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trendsdailytrendsdeaths 3. Heather Hollingworth, One-Day US Deaths Top 3,000, More Than D-Day or 9/11, U.S. News & World Report (Dec. 10, 2020). https://www.usnews.com/news /health-news/articles/2020-12-10/one-day-us-deaths-top-3-000-more-than-d-day -or-9-11 4. On December 23, 2020, TSA screened 1,191,123 people nationwide, the largest number since March 16, 2020. Christmas travel appears heavy despite COVID warnings, WABC New York (Dec. 24, 2020). https://abc7ny.comlholiday -travel-christmas-eve-new-covid-variant/9026047/

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