Fourteen years ago, two federal government doctors, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher, met with a colleague at a burger joint in suburban Washington for a final review of a proposal they knew would be treated like a piata: telling Americans to stay home from work and school the next time the country was hit by a deadly pandemic. How that idea - born out of a request by President George W. Bush to ensure the nation was better prepared for the next contagious disease outbreak - became the heart of the national playbook for responding to a pandemic is one of the untold stories of the coronavirus crisis. A pandemic is a lot like a forest fire," Mr. Bush said in a speech at the National Institutes of Health. "If caught early it might be extinguished with limited damage." To develop ideas, the Bush administration enlisted Dr. Hatchett, who had served as a White House biodefense policy adviser, and Dr. Mecher, who was a Veterans Affairs medical officer. Dr. Mecher heard from Robert J. Glass, a senior scientist at Sandia. "Targeted social distancing strategies can be designed to effectively mitigate the local progression of pandemic influenza without the use of vaccine or antiviral drugs," concluded a study that Dr. Glass published. The administration ultimately sided with the proponents of social distancing. Then the coronavirus came, and the plan was put to work across the country for the first time. Dr. Markel called it "very gratifying to see our work used to help save lives." But, he added, "it is also horrifying."