As COVID-19 response shifts, former HHS secretary wants health experts out front
WASHINGTON — Donna Shalala compared pandemics to hurricanes: recurring disasters that require politics to take the back seat to a unified national response, reliance on science-based messaging and an organized distribution of aid.
It was an apt analogy for Ms. Shalala, a Democratic congresswoman representing South Florida who served as Health and Human Services secretary during all eight years of President Bill Clinton’s administration.
As the COVID-19 outbreak sweeps the country, it has prompted perhaps the biggest scare in America’s psyche in modern times, echoing the 2008 financial downturn and Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Ms. Shalala, 79, brings a unique perspective in such a moment, having spent her career in leadership roles in academia and public service, overseeing both health care and fiscal crises. She now finds herself in Congress — winning election in 2018 in a district long held by a Republican — at a moment of both.
And she made it clear, in a phone interview with the Post-Gazette last week, she wishes the health experts were more at the forefront of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
“We’ve got a variety of scientists who are articulate who could explain where we are,” Ms. Shalala said.
She praised a few that had been present at task force press briefings: Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health; Deborah Birx, a physician and diplomat who serves as task force’s response coordinator; Anne Schuchat, a doctor serving as the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Francis Collins, a physician and director of the National Institutes of Health.
Ms. Shalala said those health experts could share the load of public messaging.
While Dr. Fauci has garnered the most media attention in recent weeks for his decades of experience and statements that correct President Donald Trump, she said, “The idea of tying Fauci up for daily press conferences is not an appropriate use of his skills. He’s got to go back to his office and get some work done.”
The briefings should also include administration officials who are directly involved in getting the supplies out — like the Federal Emergency Management Agency — should provide specific numbers on medical supplies and any shortages of masks, ventilators and emergency equipment.
“You have to have both,” she said. “This is not only about medicine and science. This is about the pipeline and distribution system. You have to have those reports.”
Ms. Shalala, who after leaving the White House in 2001 served as president of the University of Miami, was early to lay out what she viewed as a proper response plan.
In a March 2 op-ed published by the New York Times — accompanied by a graphic of politicians and doctors yelling over each other — she called for disciplined political leadership in which elected officials “stick to the facts and allow the experts, for the most part, to be the communicators.”
Responding to the pandemic “will take more than ad hoc political messaging and emergency funding,” Ms. Shalala wrote. “It will take professional competence and a continuing commitment of financial resources toward public health.”
She wrote that Democrats as well as Republicans were trying to score political points “rather than treating this situation with the gravity and unity it deserves.”
More than three weeks after that piece ran, Ms. Shalala said in the interview she was horrified by Mr. Trump’s infusion of politics into the public health crisis.
The interview came hours after Mr. Trump suggested the economy could reopen by Easter Sunday — April 12 — which defied guidance by his own health experts. (Indeed, after Mr. Trump’s comments, Dr. Birx, the team’s response coordinator, took the podium to promise the administration would “look at the data.”)
Shortly after Mr. Trump’s comments, Jerry Falwall, Jr., president of Liberty University and a vocal supporter of the president, announced the private Christian school in Lynchburg, Va., will reopen this week.
“The president, who has been dangerous to our health care system, is now dangerous to our health,” Ms. Shalala said. “He is literally beginning to scare me with his positions.”
“You have world-class scientists standing
next to him, and he steps all over their message,” she said.
Ms. Shalala pointed to Hong Kong as an example of the risk in letting up too soon — despite the economic hardships and whatever the political fallout may be.
Hong Kong, a city of 7.5 million people, took aggressive measures and was considered a model for how to contain the virus while its neighbors like China and South Korea experienced a spike in cases. When the territory eased its quarantine measures and allowed work to resume on March 2, the city had just 100 reported COVID-19 cases.
Last week, however, a new wave of cases in the territory has prompted a return of those measures: Workers were again sent home, all non-residents were barred and anyone arriving in the city will have to undergo testing, regardless of their origin.
“Hong Kong sent its workers back too soon,” Ms. Shalala said. “The mere suggestion that [Mr. Trump] is willing to risk human lives to get the economy back is inconsistent with our core values.”
Yet Ms. Shalala struck an optimistic tone. Congress, despite all the public arguing last week over a $2.2 trillion stimulus plan, has come to a remarkable agreement, in the matter of days, on the biggest rescue package in American history, she said.
And she believes Congress will play a role to ensure the country won’t be caught flatfooted again.
“The next time, we’re going to be ready,” Ms. Shalala said. “Because we’re going to invest in redundant systems, and make sure we have the supplies on hand to deal with the next pandemic.”
“We’re going to have to be over-prepared, so that we are not catching up,” she said. Because, much like bracing for hurricane season in Florida, “people die when we’re not prepared.”