The 2024 presidential campaign has passed with candidates pressing about one of their key responsibilities: What will they do if there’s another pandemic?
It usually doesn’t A top question For voters. But it should be. In Donald Trump’s first term, we have seen the damaging consequences of a leader who is disinterested in science and unwilling to tell uncomfortable truths to his political base. The Covid-19 pandemic would have challenged any president, but the evidence advises That Trump’s leadership contributed to unnecessary deaths: 40 percent of Americans lost their lives in the first year of the pandemic, According to an estimate.
now we Looking at the threat of H5N1Or bird flu, which continues Spread through America’s dairy herds and are infected in increasing numbers people. If a bird flu pandemic were to develop, we would look back on this as a critical time to prepare. But the Biden-Harris administration has a response Certainly relaxed in some respectsTrump is on the campaign trail demanding schools vaccinate their students and promising to install anti-public health crusaders in senior roles in his White House.
Trump could re-ascend the presidency even as another pandemic threat looms. If the worst were to happen, would the sequel be any better?
Probably not, the experts told me. I began reporting this story optimistically: Trump was clearly a problematic communicator during Covid-19, with his administration responsible for Operation Warp Speed, which delivered and possibly saved effective vaccines in record-setting time. Hundreds of thousands of lives. It was a major, unexpected achievement for which the Trump administration deserves credit.
But instead of claiming such a big, beautiful achievement, Trump has mostly avoided it. Instead, he embraced America’s most notorious vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and promised him a prominent position in the White House. This is probably a good sign of what will happen in Trump’s next term.
Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me that in future emergencies, Trump “will make political calculations, and not what needs to be done.” “Infectious disease in general is framed entirely through a tribal lens, and the tribes that support it are opposed to a proactive approach to public health.”
What an H5N1 response might look like under Donald Trump
Let’s establish some things. First, although there is lingering concern among infectious disease experts about H5N1 this year due to a steady trickle of human infections, the virus has yet to ignite a pandemic. Maybe never. H5N1 has been infecting humans for more than 20 years.
Whether it’s bird flu or something else, new diseases are popping up more often In the 20th and 21st centuries, and many Scientists The frequency of epidemics is expected to increase as climate change and globalization create more opportunities for diseases to cross and spread between people.
It is inevitable that we will face another pandemic. The only question would be a later cause, and when. For now, H5N1 is the suspect garnering the most attention.
Second, the Biden administration’s response to H5N1 is deeply flawed. Vanity Fair Recently investigated Inaction by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has so far taken primary responsibility for the H5N1 response, has caused the majority of cases in livestock: chickens, turkeys and now dairy cows.
This story first appeared in the Future Perfect Newsletter.
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Experts say the federal agency is overly accommodating to the interests of the agriculture industry, which has allowed the virus to escape control and rip through dairy farms across the country. The USDA has largely deferred to states for the lead on H5N1, and state agriculture officials, especially in big farm states, are generally more deferential to agribusiness than the federal government.
In Missouri, state officials have been Slow to work Following the discovery of a human case with no apparent link to farm animals. “They are openly avoiding that dairy cattle in Missouri are infected. They don’t want to find them,” Adalza told me.
Adalja said he saw little reason to expect the Kamala Harris administration to take a substantially different approach; His public health record Basically his record as Biden’s vice president. But Trump, if he takes office, would actively weaken the federal government’s ability to respond to pandemic threats.
He said he would “probably” Close the White House’s pandemic office, tasked with coordinating government-wide responses to future crises. He has threatened to cut off federal funding for schools that institute vaccines or mask mandates. He also promised to cut the government budget Single out As candidates for CDC cuts.
And while the bird flu response under Biden has been muted, at least Some attempt to concentrate a response. The current administration has proposed About $100 million There are also preventive measures for dairy farms signed A deal with Moderna to develop a new H5N1 vaccine, while Add stock Existing flu vaccine prototypes.
But in another Trump presidency, states will likely have the power to take a more relaxed approach to public health, and leaders in Republican-controlled states will be motivated by the same public health skepticism as their conservative voters. The political environment for a free-for-all will mature, expand, in response at the state level The difference we saw during Covid-19While some states allowed businesses and schools to reopen months before others did, and even banned cities from mandating mask or vaccine requirements.
A second Trump administration will likely be staffed by people who are even more skeptical of public health interventions than we saw in his first term. In 2020, Trump still had trusted infectious disease experts on his team, such as Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Deborah Burks, who served as the White House’s Covid response coordinator, even if he frequently underestimated them. .
Next time, there’s unlikely to be any such voice in the room. Internal discussions will be dominated by the likes of RFK Jr. or Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lapado, another vaccine skeptic. floating As a potential Trump recruit. To lead the USDA, Trump alleged gaze Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who to say Vanity Fair that bird flu is “no big deal. It’s no small deal.” He has refused to cooperate with the CDC on testing farm workers in his state.
Adalza said “these are the only people left” to serve in the Trump administration. “Skillful people don’t want to be a part of it or be elected.”
It’s a scary scenario to contemplate, and it illustrates our collective disadvantage planning for unlikely but potentially catastrophic events. We’ve all lived through a test of what happens when governments struggle to respond to a health crisis. Yet at the onset of Covid, I heard from public health experts who worried that we would not internalize the lessons of the pandemic, that public health would be sidelined once the emergency passed.
They are mostly proven the right.
To be clear, the failure to learn from the Covid example and prepare now for future pandemics with smart policies — many of which you can read about in Future Perfect’s pandemic-proof package — is bipartisan. There is a complete absence of a public health plan from the 2024 campaign, even after enduring a pandemic and looking at the prospect of another so soon. As a result we may be worse off.
