It has now been well over two years since the first confirmed American case of COVID-19. In the time since, we've seen over 80 million confirmed cases and surpassed 1 million deaths, while tens of millions of jobs have been upended and hundreds of thousands of businesses closed their doors only to never see them re-opened.
After dealing with the wreckage of COVID-19, it would be reasonable to assume that America would have already set in motion a comprehensive plan of action to prepare for "the next COVID".
Yet the frightening reality is that we as a nation are woefully unprepared for the next pandemic. And we mustn’t kid ourselves that COVID will be the only pandemic we may see in our lifetimes.
The good news is that public health professionals have a plan for the US to prepare its defenses, and I commit to taking a leading role in ensuring that these policy recommendations are enacted once I am in Congress.
They include:
- Fully funding the White House’s proposed $30 billion pandemic preparedness plan, which will increase the supply and stockpiles of masks, vaccines, and tests, ensure the CDC is held accountable to a designated Congressional appointee, and address disparities in at-risk populations
- Expediting the process for which vaccines and therapeutics can be created, manufactured, and distributed to communities across the nation
- Surveilling diseases so we can stop the spread before it begins, along with requiring all counties in the US to report to the CDC details about outbreaks
- Streamlining the process for which states can report cases
- Providing low-income countries with vaccines to try and prevent new COVID variants from developing through unmitigated spread
- Investigating the origins of COVID-19 so we can try and stop a similar pandemic from happening in the future
- Fully funding federal oversight of dual-use research to prevent dangerous viral threats emerging as a byproduct of scientific research
- Preparing all 50 states in the nation for the reality of another pandemic, and bolstering the readiness of each state to handle emergency services to both keep our economic engine running while people stay home to stop the spread.
