COVID-19 here to stay, former FDA chief tells Westport audience
WESTPORT — Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who advised Gov. Ned Lamont during the height of the pandemic, predicted COVID-19 was here to stay.
During a conversation at the Westport Library, Gottlieb spoke to CNN journalist Alisyn Camerota about his new book “Uncontrolled Spread,” which largely criticizes America’s response to the pandemic and warns politicians and officials to prepare for the next one.
He also said while governmental restrictions will likely ease further in the near term, people should prepare for COVID-19 to be a fixture in seasonal diseases.
“I don’t think we’ll have mandates in place on a permanent basis,” he said. “But I think our culture is going to change around the risk of respiratory pathogens in the wintertime. And it’s gonna have to because we can’t be as complacent as we’ve been about flu, with the twin risk of COVID and flu circulating.”
He predicted a shift in work life and social interactions as people continue to take precautions around having people in close
quarters in colder season.
And masks may become commonplace even after the immiment threat of COVID-19 diminishes, Gottlieb said.
“I think we’re going to have a veneer of safety around respiratory disease that we didn’t have before COVID,” Gottlieb said.
Gottlieb also took aim at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, criticizing them for fumbling public health messaging.
The CDC was not the right agency to take the lead on COVID-19, Gottlieb said. Instead, he said the U.S. should have tried creating a hybrid entity that combined the scientific expertise of the CDC with the operational capability
of other agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
His book argues that COVID-19 revealed severe faults in several government agencies, including the CDC, and underscored how ill-prepared the country was for any pandemic.
Gottlieb, who was the first FDA Commissioner under former President Donald Trump, said he had told key players in Congress and within the Trump administration how concerned he had been with the government’s handling of the pandemic in its early days.
“I don’t think anybody sensed how bad it could potentially get,” Gottlieb told Camerota.