But it could happen. Biden proposed $30 billion to address the issue, which advocates say could permanently mitigate the risks of future outbreaks. The investment would replenish medical stockpiles, proactively develop vaccines for major types of viruses, and ensure that the United States has a permanent production base of face masks and respirators. In effect, it would amount to an Apollo program–like push to guarantee that a global pandemic could never shut down the country again.
Yet those funds have been slashed in the current negotiations over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package as part of a push to slim it down, according to a source familiar with the situation. (I agreed not to name this person because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the negotiations.) While the exact amount is still in flux, it is significantly less than requested.
In the past week, public-health advocates and nonprofits have mobilized against the reduction, which Tom Frieden, a former CDC director who now runs the nonprofit
Resolve to Save Lives,
first revealed earlier this month. But as the White House and Democrats in Congress discuss the package’s details, they may be locking in an outdated approach to tackling pandemics, quietly and out of public view.
“Public health has been chronically underfunded. But prevention is always better than treatment, and the fact that, after an event as significant as COVID, we have to fight for this $30 billion defies belief,” Gabriel Bankman-Fried, the executive director of the nonprofit Guarding Against Pandemics, told me. (The White House and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not respond to requests for comment.)