HENRY CISNEROS: To save lives, start transition now.

I served as a co-chair of two presidential transitions: the transition from President George H.W. Bush to President Bill Clinton in 1992 and the transition to President Clinton’s second term in 1996.

From those experiences I gained insights that might be helpful to people who are perplexed by today’s news stories about the barriers being placed before the 2020 transition.

First, I learned the transition from one administration to the next is a massive undertaking and takes time because the federal government is large and complex. The transition committee on which I served began its work in early September, before the election in early November. Those of us named to co-chair the Clinton committee — including later Secretary of StateWarren Christopher and civil rights leader Vernon Jordan — could not be sure in September that Clinton would win. But it is a well-established principle in American government that preparations for a transition must begin well before the election — just in case. Decisions need to be made immediately in the days after a successful election.

The federal government has 15 Cabinet departments — the Department of Defense alone has

2.6 million positions — and dozens of independent agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.

The transition committee’s purpose is to prepare updated descriptions of the work of each department, to accurately describe its organization, to review the most urgent pending issues in each department, and to prepare notebooks with the biographies of the most qualified people to be Cabinet secretaries, subsecretaries and presidential appointees.

The committees also held meetings with the president-elect so he could inquire about individuals for key posts. All this involved meeting with key members of Bush’s outgoing administration in their offices.

A second observation is that the immensity of the government contributed to the size of the work group needed. What started as a committee of several people and staff required hundreds of volunteer experts between Election Day and the inauguration. I was surprised after Election Day when we moved into several floors of a downtownWashington office building. It required many people and good organization to host large work sessions of leaders from across the nation and every sector of American life to focus deeply on the economy, health policy and national security to help frame the president’s early policy initiatives and legislative proposals. As a result, the president was ready to hit the ground running on the afternoon of Inauguration Day.

A good transition period contributes to seamlessly effective governance in the first year of an administration. Policies are drafted, priorities set, officials appointed, and preparations made for the torrent of decisions and demands that begin on Day One. That would be true even in calm moments in history. But it is much more intense in the midst of a dangerous pandemic and the severe economic downturn that has followed.

America is facing emergency conditions. More than 250,000 people have died. Imagine if we were in a shooting war and already had 250,000 casualties, and an incoming administration was denied access to security briefings, prevented from becoming familiar with troop strengths and left unprepared about pending attack plans.

That is effectively what is happening now. People are dying, and the Department of Health and Human Services issued orders to its staff not to speak with the incoming Biden administration. COVID-19 cases are peaking, and the General Services Administration refuses to sign the ascertainment papers allowing the Biden transition team to use offices and engage staff. Hospitalizations are pushing past intensive care capacities, and President Donald Trump pretends he can reverse the election results with lawsuits and false charges of massive fraud in states where the margins show him behind by tens of thousands of votes.

The reality is, we are now past the point where we can humor the truculence of one man. The people voted for new leadership to work us out of a pandemic crisis. It is time to proceed with an effective transition to do the urgent work of the government on Jan. 20. That urgent work is to supply hospitals, transmit medical guidance, distribute vaccines, assist families and businesses in severe economic distress, and save lives.

Go Nakamura / Getty Images Medical staff members in Houston treat a patient suffering from the novel coronavirus at United Memorial Medical Center this month. A proper presidential transition would go a long way toward addressing COVID-19 in America and saving lives. But that’s not happening.