the air force has announced the creation of a new information operations technical training school the first command simply must arm our airmen to outrank outperform out-partner help innovate any potential adversary air force basic military training has an updated curriculum with a new focus on readiness and lethality the first command the air force starts here hello and welcome to the air force starts here podcast i'm your host for this professional development podcast staff sergeant keith james from the aetc public affairs team in this episode we are discussing aetc's role in fighting through the cobid 19 pandemic with former 59th medical wing commander major general john j degoes major general degoes and his team are being praised for leading the charge for fighting through covert 19 across aetc take a listen to what lieutenant general brad webb commander of aetc had to say about general dagos's leadership during the 50 nights change of command there's this little thing called covid uh they came upon us a little over a year ago probably a year and you know four or five months ago now on top of all that the medical wing was responsible for and jj is responsible for leading during this time frame this i can tell you will be the singular piece that resonates in my mind that occurred because uh in those early days we had uh the wuhan province american citizens that were evacuated a chunk of which came to lachlan followed right on the heels by the princess cruise liner american citizens as well so we had a couple reps under our belt but in those days specifically i think it was friday the 13th of march when the order was to shelter in place was for aet let me just speak as the atc commander for a moment the defining moment for us right there because there was calls within this within our service to stand down take a knee shelter in place affect the other services that was that was where they cast their lot jj degoz was of the mindset that we got this we got a plan there was terminology that i've never even heard before i didn't know what a rom was you know jj briefly we're in ram i'm like great what's wrong i mean literally never heard of the term and and the point was we uh we had stolen a march uh on the pandemic probably by i'm guessing a week it might have been less than that but that was a game-changing week jj rightfully correct had our mindset focused this was obviously bmt focused but it it rolled into every aspect of air education training command and our education training command uh has from that moment forward been postured as the kind of a leader in this fight through uh kovit now it wasn't without challenges we've certainly had uh the the disease present in our ranks or the epidemic present our ranks and such but that mentality i mean i you know if you look at the charts of uh air force readiness without continuing to crank through 800 new trainees into the air force every week especially when you don't have a stop loss the readiness of the united states air force goes in the tank and it goes in the tank in a hurry you know when i think of the 59th medical wing and in fact i i said that i'm not sure if i said it first but i certainly picked up on if i didn't say it first when i visited reed clinic for instance uh and saw that hey you get this is the front line infantry uh on this war on kovit you are the front line industry in fact y'all y'all made that uh tent uh area with the like the uh little uh reception area for tent and said ladies and gentlemen you're about to enter the front lines on the war on covid right there i go that is absolutely right and that kind of mentality has served you all well it has served basic training well it has served air education and training command well it served our service well and frankly it served our nation well i'm really really proud of you all for the job that you've done during this and of course i'm talking like it's over it's not over it's far from over this continues every day those efforts uh are monumental those efforts really you know when you have a decider going what are we going to do because you know the chiefs kind of said i think we we could probably shelter and ride this out we didn't do that we didn't do that because you all we do that because of leadership here on the stage so that's ladies and gentlemen's leadership that's visionary leadership that's trailblazing leadership that's leadership that's built on teamwork that's leadership that's built on innovation your boss is responsible for that you all have carried that through so for that i'm telling you jj you did a pretty good job in command how about a hand for a journal to goes so jj's off for you know for his sins he's going to go to dc now you know he had he's been avoiding this dc uh assignment like the play gets caught up to him he's going to go beat the deputy surgeon journal up in d.c j.j in all sincerity thank you thank you for the job well done under general dagosa's leadership aetc was able to continue training during the height of the pandemic by adjusting as information on the virus became available aetc's historian mr gary boyd spoke of general the ghost on the modified training procedures put into place to ensure the health and safety of our force in mission readiness take a listen sir i i just wanted to say thank you for the all of atc because i i i've heard you from the start on this and we owe you a big debt of gratitude for uh bringing in that professional public health perspective every day of this operation we have a great team here and i think this is really you know a team story first thing i want to ask you is preparations uh how ready were we for this scale of a pandemic i know we were in the midst of manpower cuts then everything was kind of dire prior to the pandemic as far as uh you know business as usual within aetc and jbsa what what is your uh assessment of our state of relations for the pandemic supplies testing that kind of thing yeah i i'd say mix you know we you know at jbsa have a uh you know a required uh in fact was just inspected by the you know the capstone uei event a disease containment plan or a dcp and that really part of that is responding to a novel infection whether it be flu or coronavirus and so you know i i think you know we we had table tops we partnered with san antonio metro health district on points of distribution you know how we would use the national strategic stockpile so i would say that uh yep we had a concept of operations for um how to approach a pandemic um we you know but but we were challenged initially by adequate ppe at bansey where you know we cover 50 percent of level one trauma in san antonio and so we we actually stopped all elective surgeries so you know unless you had kind of an emergency thing and pretty much the months of march and april at bansi were waiting for a giant new york-like surge that didn't materialize and you know most of the that i mean part of it was a little maybe slightly too conservative but the justification was largely based on inadequate ppe resupply overall cooperation and planning was really quite good and and i think we uh you know brand new disease so evolving guidance you know and stuff in the media like oh you know you're flip flopping well that's normal with science you want to when you get more information you want to change things and so uh it took a little while before you know everybody was crystal clear that the the benefits outweighed the risks and you know they said a cloth face covering got you the vast majority of the benefit and so you know you started to see private industry and people were making their own bandana things etc absolutely and i really appreciate your uh extending on that because i really feel like that was a key issue early on and i thought one of the great things that you did originally and probably earlier than anyone else was focus the healthcare there at the 59th on the pandemic and on the emergent diseases and the electives going away what turned out to be an extremely important decision because you were able to save you know ration ppe and it kept us in a position where we could maintain training now uh that's a long way around saying uh i know the general web had so much confidence in the big six and in the 59th in particular that she felt like we could continue training even though it wasn't necessarily mandated and it was kind of an unknown risk given the ppe shortages so my next question is this did do you feel like you had enough support and do you feel like the the confidence and the risks that we took to keep the fighting through and with the pipeline were uh basically a good risk to take a risk award vertices so that you know uh risk and and maybe not uh sufficient reward yeah no so um i i i was i thought it was a risk worth taking i mean i i can i can remember exactly where i was sitting in martin hall uh on friday march the 13th when the big six was together i think really the the a1 side and general tullis had kind of said you know we're going to fall really way way behind in production and and i think that day was the first time i heard general webb mention fighting through and so you know he pointed you know asked me and and you know i told him i thought we could fight through that we had experience with outbreaks before large outbreaks of adenovirus you know that hundreds of cases several you know probably dozens of hospitalizations at wilford hall during basic training in the 2006 2007 and that you know we had learned from those lessons and i and i had been discussing this with arch you know we have the senior infectious disease docs in the air force um and frankly in the army you know at both at bmc uh and so i you know i broke down the risk for i by the bottom line up front was i told him i thought that we could fight through i said it is possible that we'll have significant outbreaks that could get to the point where we would have to temporarily stop um and that in a large outbreak even though a disease which is very mild in the demographic that comes to basic training um you know you could have some severe cases and in a rare instance there could even be a death but you know i told them that there is no better place in the country to take care of severe respiratory illness than san antonio and bamsey has the only organic ecmo which is heart lung bypass or extra corporeal membrane oxygenation in the department of defense so if something you know went sideways with basic training that you know we had the capability here and we also had much more local testing capability than any other basic training site no other place you know army navy or marine corps is is at kind of major medical centers with major testing and care capability they would have to typically send people out then tests out so for all those reasons i i said i thought we could fight through and i told him that i thought there were three risks the individual trainee risk the demographics that young people who had had you know a minimal screen to enter were not likely to be in the older uh you know healthcare compromise that were you know more likely to die from it the mission risk i said was moderate because basic trainees convey so we could mitigate that by starting off like half class sizes so instead of you know 850 you know 425 which would increase spacing we can reconfigure the open bays change the cots from you know don't put two heads uh back to back basically head to toe so at either side of the room so it it gave way more than six foot space and then the third risk i said was brand risk and the uh if you go back to the last pandemic of this scope which i said you know was the 1918 uh pandemic flu you know that was called spanish blue but really probably originated in the united states was aided and evented by the army troop movements in search to go to europe for world war one and i said you know we we move a ton of people uh you know with uh basic training and you know there is a risk that if we don't do this really well we could be viewed by either the city of san antonio or the world because we send send graduates to tech training all over and tech training graduates off to first duty stations all over the world as actually you know worsening the pandemic spreading it and so i said you know that one you know we can mitigate that there are ways to do it um and so i could tell it kind of you know resonated with them well well general i i again i want to i want to thank you i think your name is going to go down with the malcolm groves and the david grants and harry armstrong's because you were here at a time where it was actually critical that you had that aatc experience and you used it and you actually led rather than then waited to be led and you helped the nation not just atc get through this pandemic so i'm i'm in complete off a lot of the decisions that you might have made in hasty turned out to be i think validated over time and uh i i cannot thank you enough and i i know you're going to a place where we can maybe help adjust the country to what a post or near post cover 19 environment looks like and that i i know you're going to continue to service well general that's all i have uh and i want to thank you for your time so much and just you know again i think the success is really starts with general webb you know and given the opportunity because you know it's not always that way i mean there's different leadership styles etc and uh um you know i think the creation of the big six etc um you know is really important and uh and so uh again you know chance favors the prepared mind and i had i had a lot of good chance and uh you know my past my past within aetc understanding the mission being on the aetc staff as a major between 2000 and 2002 and general hornberg was the commander and and you know so many other assignments you know seven years at wilford hall originally four at keisler two at the headquarters and you know having the the uh you know the being the vice and then the commander here but again i i i told general goldstein that when he came uh uh you know to visit the first time which was kind of when there was a little uproar in the city when when one of the wuhan am sits after release you know had this one hanging chad positive which was like a false positive but was at the food court at the north star mall and the city was in arms and uh and so you know again i i i stand by that uh you know you set teams up for for success and it really starts at the very top and so clearly general webb did that for us thank you very much i appreciate the time to to add to the story a little bit uh take care general the ghost credits the ability to continue fighting through the pandemic to a strong culture of safety strict implementation of cdc guidelines and the mitigation of risks across our training pipelines recruits are tested as they arrived at basic military training and those who test positive were isolated and given medical care if needed academics drill and physical training are modified but continue to occur in some cases virtual learning is being used to ensure social distance is maintained aetc continues to fight through covet and continues to encourage airmen to get vaccinated to help to stop the spread of the virus thank you for the subscribe stream or download as a reminder you can follow air education and training command and the aetc command team on social media from our entire aetc public affairs team i am staff sergeant keith james and i will talk to you next time on the air force starts here