Biden’s strategy on virus praised
He’d boost testing, rejoin WHO, enlist governors
If he wins the election, Joe Biden’s pandemic plan calls for rejoining the World Health Organization and thrusting federal public health agencies that have been largely sidelined under the current administration back into the spotlight.
That would be his first day in theWhite House, his campaign says. The next steps of his response, laid out in detail on his campaign website, include massively ramping up testing, increasing production of health care equipment like ventilators and promoting widespread use of face coverings.
Biden’s agenda does not call for new economic shutdowns, despite repeated assertions by his Republican opposition that he would lock down the country. Instead, Biden calls for a cautious reopening that suggests the fastest path to recovery is controlling the spread of the virus with all the public health tools in the U. S. arsenal.
Less than two weeks from election day, and
with the pandemic surging across much of the United States, how President Trump and former Vice President Biden intend to confront the coronavirus remains a top concern among voters. The topic will almost certainly loom large over Thursday’s second and final presidential debate.
Public health and infectious disease experts who have studied both candidates’ plans say Biden’s approach is reassuringly steeped in science and centered on a clearly defined federal agenda. Though not perfect, it would be a remarkable shift from Trump’s haphazard, politically driven response, which includes pushing to reopen the economy as quickly as possible, saidWarner Greene, a senior investigator with the Gladstone Institutes, a San Francisco research group associated with UCSF.
“It’s rational. It’s what you would expect from a president. It’s not just winging it,” said Greene, an expert in virology and infectious diseases. “What we’ve had is a very political, very uneven approach. We can do better. We have the tools if we could just employ them.
“I have confidence that Biden would be a friend of science, and that would be a breath of fresh air,” he added.
Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley, said he has some critiques of Biden’s plan, most notably that he’d like to see more emphasis on rebuilding the nation’s public health infrastructure. But Trump’s campaign has not released a formal plan beyond pushing out a vaccine as quickly as possible, and the president himself insists that the end of the pandemic is in sight, even as cases spike in most states.
“Anything is better” than no plan at all, Riley said.
The U. S. has fared worse than most other countries in the pandemic, with disproportionately high case counts and deaths. More than 220,000 Americans have died, and the U. S. makes up just 4% of the world’s population but roughly a fifth of all coronavirus cases.
“Just acknowledging this is a real public health issue and taking a leadership role — acknowledging that this is something that has to be dealt with — that’s a big deal,” Riley said.
Bay Area experts identified several key features of Biden’s plan that they were relieved to see addressed:
Immediately rejoin the World Health Organization, which Trump withdrew from over the summer. 1 Rely on guidance from scientists with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies. Restore public trust in organizations that have been devalued by the current administration.
Work with governors and other state and local leaders to promote widespread use of face coverings. Some experts believe that this one public health tool could dramatically slow down spread of the disease and allow much of the national economy to reopen. “Masking is the key out of this,” Greene said. 1 Develop a vaccine distribution plan based on recommendations from federal experts. “Biden seems to be plugged into what it will take, and I don’t see that in Trump at all. He just has this thing where we’ll have 300 million doses by the first of the year,” said Stephen Shortell, former dean of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. 1 Use the Defense Production Act to fortify the supply chain for personal protective equipment, ventilators and other critical tools, especially in lowerincome and disproportionately impacted communities.
Ramp up coronavirus testing across the board, with an emphasis on athome and rapid tests. The United States currently conducts about 1 million tests a day; Biden calls for roughly tripling that.
Invest in a national contacttracing workforce that includes hiring at least 100,000 Americans to send to public health departments around the U. S.
“It’s a pretty detailed plan. It’s quite polished,” said George Rutherford, an infectious disease expert with UCSF. If Biden wins and starts putting parts of his plan in place immediately, “it has potential for being a major turning point in this pandemic,” Rutherford said.
Rutherford and several other experts specifically cited Biden’s intention to work with the World Health Organization and to reengage with the global coronavirus response as urgently important.
“That’s going to be the most important thing of his presidency, if elected, is to immediately rejoin the WHO,” said Shortell. “The United States cannot isolate or quarantine itself from the rest of the world.”
Shortell said he was also impressed by gestures in Biden’s plan to address health disparities that have led to high rates of coronavirus infection and deaths in communities of color. Biden has said he would create a COVID19 racial and ethnic disparities task force, following the lead of his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, who proposed a similar legislative initiative in the spring.
Rutherford said that as an expert in global health, he, too, is especially pleased to see an emphasis on international relations in Biden’s plan. Just as California is vulnerable to outbreaks while the virus is surging in other parts of the country, the U. S. as a whole will remain at risk in this pandemic as long as it rages in other parts of the world, he said.
Biden’s plan includes funding of global health projects, including surveillance networks to look for the next new viral pandemic.
“The international strategy looks really good, really smart,” Rutherford said. “I didn’t see any holes in it.”
As encouraged as he is by much of Biden’s plan, Riley said he’s disappointed that the former vice president has not emphasized longterm strategies for facing the next pandemic, in particular by ramping up funding of federal, state and local public health. Biden does discuss the need for such investment in his plan, but he’s slim on details, Riley said.
“He doesn’t go far enough. I really would like to see more explicit plans to increase funding for the CDC and state health departments. The CDC didn’t have enough funding to coordinate all of the public health response,” Riley said. “They can do all the things they’re planning to do with this plan, but when a pandemic hits again, we’re going to be more reactive than preventative.”
One issue that potentially overshadows Biden’s response is how any plan of his would go over in a deeply divided nation, where even the issue of wearing face coverings is politically charged. Several public health experts said Biden, if he wins, almost certainly will experience significant pushback to any national agenda.
“But people will eventually follow,” Riley said. “At least I hope so.”