UCSF doctors picked for virus panel
Presidentelect Joe Biden on Monday, in his first formal action since winning the election, named a 13member coronavirus advisory committee that includes three UCSF doctors to help develop a pandemic response he can activate the moment he enters the White
House.
The committee is stacked with scientists, frontline doctors and public health experts with longtime political and policymaking experience, outside observers said. That nearly a quarter of the members are from UCSF is a sign of the breadth of expertise in the Bay Area and, possibly, how well the region has done in managing its pandemic, public health experts said.
There’s little the advisory group can accomplish at the moment with Biden not yet in office, even as the coronavirus batters most of the country. The United States hit 10 million total confirmed cases on Monday, the most of any nation in the world, and has been reporting more than 100,000 new cases a day over the past week.
But public health experts and other local leaders said Monday that it’s reassuring to see such a team assembled and know that they will be guiding policy for the nation in a few months.
“This is a very highly respected group of people who will give really sound advice,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the UCSF Department of Medicine. “They are terrific and diverse in every sense of the word — I mean in race and ethnicity but also perspective. It’s people with government service, people who are frontline clinicians, people who are patient advocates, people who understand vaccines and testing.”
In a news briefing Monday morning — his first since winning the election — Biden said the nation is facing “a very dark winter,” and his administration’s priority would be the pandemic. “It starts by doing everything possible to get COVID19 under control so that we can reopen our businesses safely and sustainably, resume our lives, and put this pandemic behind us,” he said.
“The challenge before us right now is still immense and growing,” Biden said. “We are not in office yet. I’m laying out what we can expect to do. This group will advise on detailed plans, build on a bedrock of science, and keep compassion and empathy and care for every American at its core.”
Biden’s committee is cochaired by Dr. David Kessler, a UCSF pediatrician and epidemiologist who was commissioner of the U. S. Food and Drug Administration from 1990 to 1997. Kessler was fired from his post as UCSF vice chancellor and medical school dean in 2007 after he said he uncovered problems in the school’s finances.
The two other cochairs are Dr. Vivek Murthy, former U. S. surgeon general under President Obama, and Dr. Marcella NunezSmith, a professor at Yale University and an expert in health care for marginalized populations.
Also from UCSF are Dr. Robert Rodriguez, a professor and researcher in UCSF’s department of emergency medicine who was included for his expertise on the mental health of coronavirus first responders, and Dr. Eric Goosby, who led AIDS policy directives under both President Barack Obama and President Bill Clinton. Goosby currently is director of the Center for Global Health Delivery and Diplomacy, a joint initiative between UCSF and UC Berkeley.
None of the committee members were made available for comment on Monday. In a statement, Rodriguez said he was honored by the appointment. “I look forward to advocating for frontline providers across the U. S. and for the millions of Americans whose only health care access is in emergency departments,” he said.
Dr. George Rutherford, a UCSF infectious disease expert and former state health officer, said the team is an impressive group of not only scientists and physicians, but people who are familiar with the sometimes murky, esoteric corners of policy grunt work.
“These are smart people who know how to make thing happen in Washington,” he said.
Kessler, for example, brings with him a lengthy resume in policy that should prove invaluable to Biden’s plans for deploying a vaccine and treatments. “His experience with FDA is just phenomenal, and understanding about moving drugs, devices, vaccines — that’s huge,”
Rutherford said. “It’s so arcane, it’s so ruleladen, that you need insiders to do it.”
Wachter said UCSF’s representation is “a source of great pride.” He added that it seemed likely Biden’s team had noted the university’s role in the Bay Area’s pandemic response. “It’s hard to think of an institution that has stepped up to the plate more than we have,” he said. “We have been part of an overall response that worked.”
Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley who knows most of the committee members by reputation, said he was pleased to see certain names. Goosby is “an outstanding person, and his work in AIDS is highly regarded,” he said.
Dr. Atul Gawande, a professor of surgery at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who was a senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration, is “probably one of the best communicators I’ve ever experienced,” Swartzberg said.
He said he took particular delight in the appointment of Dr. Rick Bright, a virologist and whistleblower who was ousted as head of the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority after criticizing President Trump’s coronavirus response.
Swartzberg and others said they hoped that Biden’s election, and the naming of this sciencedriven task force, would provide some relief for local politicians and public health leaders who have felt largely abandoned by the federal government through the pandemic.
In an interview on Sunday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the fact Biden was already talking about his pandemic response plan, and that he clearly understands the severity of COVID19 and the challenges facing the country, “gives me hope.”
“We’re still struggling, we’re still having serious challenges around leadership. And cities have been left on their own to figure these things out,” Breed said. “It’s not like we’re saying it should be all on the president, but this should be all of us working together and that’s not the case.”
Similarly, Swartzberg said that as an expert in infectious diseases and public health, secondguessing and pushing back against the Trump administration during the pandemic has been exhausting.
“I felt I was constantly defending science from the U. S. government,” he said. “Everybody in public health right now, from the city of Berkeley to the county of Alameda to the state health department, we’ve had to be doing this on our own. We’ve had not only no support from the federal government, we’ve been led down the wrong direction.
“Everybody can breathe a sigh of relief on Jan. 20,” he said.