One obvious weakness of the options they have to do this is they're preparing for diseases we've seen, not novel diseases we haven't seen yet. But in the case of COVID-19, it's an airborne pathogen so the flu containment protocol was the best tool in the toolbox. Masks, hand-washing, and lockdowns didn't come out of a vacuum; they're part of the standard process (which most people perhaps didn't know because unlike, say, fire-fighting, we don't have regular TV shows about pandemics).
Yes, the CDC models out pandemic responses in advance between panedmics. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm
One obvious weakness of the options they have to do this is they're preparing for diseases we've seen, not novel diseases we haven't seen yet. But in the case of COVID-19, it's an airborne pathogen so the flu containment protocol was the best tool in the toolbox. Masks, hand-washing, and lockdowns didn't come out of a vacuum; they're part of the standard process (which most people perhaps didn't know because unlike, say, fire-fighting, we don't have regular TV shows about pandemics).