White House not prepared for pandemic, experts warn
The Trump administration has failed to fill crucial public health positions across the government, leaving the nation ill-prepared to face one of its greatest potential threats: a pandemic outbreak of a deadly infectious disease, according to experts in health and national security.
No one knows where or when the next outbreak will occur, but health security experts say it is inevitable. Every president since Ronald Reagan has faced threats from infectious diseases, and the number of outbreaks is on the rise.
Over the past three years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has monitored more than 300 outbreaks in 160 countries, tracking 37 dangerous pathogens in 2016 alone. Infectious diseases cause about 15 percent of all deaths worldwide.
But after 11 weeks in office, the Trump administration has filled few of the senior positions critical to responding to an outbreak. There is no permanent director at the CDC or at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, no one has been named to fill subCabinet posts for health, global affairs, or preparedness and response. It’s also unclear whether the National Security Council will assume the same leadership on the issue as it did under President Barack Obama, according to public health experts.
“We need people in position to help steer the ship,” said Steve Davis, the chief executive of PATH, a Seattle-based international health technology nonprofit working with countries to improve their ability to detect disease. “We are actually very concerned.”
In addition to leaving key posts vacant, the Trump administration has displayed little interest in the issue, health and security experts say.
The White House has made few public statements about the importance of preparing for outbreaks, and it has yet to build the international relationships that are crucial for responding to global health crises. Trump also has proposed sharp cuts to government agencies working to stop deadly outbreaks at their source.
The slow progress on senior-level appointments — even those, such as the CDC director, that do not require Senate confirmation — is hobbling Cabinet secretaries at agencies across the government. Temporary “beachhead” teams the White House installed are hitting the end of their appointments. The remaining civil servants have little authority to make major decisionsor mobilize resources.
An HHS spokeswoman declined to comment on personnel decisions. An NSC official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the administration recognizes that global health security is a national security issue and that America’s health depends on the world’s ability to detect threats wherever they occur.
Trump’s NSC does not have a point person for global health security as Obama’s did, but global health security is part of the overall portfolio of Tom Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser, another NSC official said.
Global health experts warn that a pandemic threat could be as deadly as a nuclear attack — and is much more probable.
A global health crisis “will go from being on no one’s to-do list to being the only thing on their list,” said Bill Steiger, who headed the HHS office of global health affairs during the George W. Bush administration. He spoke at a panel on pandemic preparedness in early January. He is now part of Trump’s beachhead team at the State Department.
Next month, the G-20 governments, which traditionally focus on finance and economics, will convene their health ministers for the first time, in part to test coordination and preparedness for a pandemic, according to German officials, who are hosting the summit in Berlin. It’s not clear who will represent the United States.
In a speech to a security conference in Munich earlier this year, billionaire Bill Gates said a pandemic threat needs to be taken as seriously as other national security issues.
“Imagine if I told you that somewhere in this world, there’s a weapon that exists — or that could emerge — capable of killing tens of thousands, or millions of people, bringing economies to a standstill and throwing nations into chaos,” said Gates, who has spent billions to improve health worldwide.
The projected annual cost of a pandemic could reach as high as $570 billion.
Last month, Trump met with Gates at the White House. After the meeting, press secretary Sean Spicer said the two had “a shared commitment to finding and stopping disease outbreaks around the world.”
Americans are at greater risk than ever from new infectious diseases, drug-resistant infections and potential bioterrorism organisms, despite advances in medicine and technology, experts say.
Not only has the total number of outbreaks increased in the past three decades, but the scale, impact and methods of transmission also have expanded because of climate change, urbanization and globalization.