Federalism in the Time of SARS: A Comparative Analysis of the Response to Public Health Threats in Federalist Societies

Abstract

In the fall of 2001, several news media offices and two democratic U.S. Senators received letters containing anthrax spores. This attack killed five people and infected seventeen others. In early 2003, an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crippled an unprepared Canada, infecting over four hundred Canadians and resulting in forty-four fatalities. In the spring of 2011, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) of Germany was notified of a cluster of cases of Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) near Hamburg, Germany. In 2009, Victoria was the first Australian state to report widespread transmission of