WaPo Editorial Board: The U.S. needs a nonpartisan commission to evaluate pandemic failures

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Opinion: The U.S. needs a nonpartisan commission to evaluate pandemic failures

Opinion by the Editorial Board
May 23, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. EDT

A SENSE of relief that the pandemic is ebbing in the United States should not ease the importance of understanding what went wrong and how to fix it. We have often underscored the inept response of President Donald Trump and urged investigation of the virus origins. But there are deeper, systemic failures that must also be studied and addressed. The largest public health disaster in a century deserves an independent, nonpartisan commission to find the answers. President Biden and Congress should step up to the plate.

Some partial efforts have already been made, such as the World Health Organization’s inconclusive joint work with China on the virus origins, or the recently published evaluation of a WHO independent panel. But what’s needed at this point is to undertake the largest commission investigation in American history, with international coordination and help. Fortunately, with foundation support, much groundwork for such a probe has been laid by the Covid Commission Planning Group led by Philip Zelikow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The planning group has identified an ambitious agenda that looks both back and ahead, including study of the origins of the virus and variants; gaps in biosurveillance and data collection; problems in pandemic preparedness and local public health; difficulties with mitigation and its tools; faults in care for the sick; and the challenge of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. The agenda also includes documenting the frightful narrative of the pandemic in the eyes of victims, families and health-care workers. Already, the group has conducted 110 listening sessions across the United States and Europe, consulted with government officials and experts, and identified about 40 lines of inquiry and work plans. A commission would require real muscle and resources, larger and different than the 9/11 Commission, of which Mr. Zelikow was executive director.

Such a nonpartisan commission would be a golden opportunity to rebuild U.S. credibility after the stumbles of the pandemic. It could document clearly what went wrong, why certain pandemic response plans buckled and how crisis decisions were made, and show what a government should do next time. ...

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-us-needs-a-nonpartisan-commission-to-evaluate-pandemic-failures/2021/05/22/d2848622-ba58-11eb-96b9-e949d5397de9_story.html

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... if only both parties operated in the fact-based universe.

[sprinkleeninow]

1. Bipartisan won't work. Ever. eom

[VarryOn]

2. That's what Congress is for...

"Commissions" are a joke.

[tclambert]

3. Yes! Before the next one hits.

Covid was just a dress rehearsal for the real deal. And we failed miserably.

The next pandemic could be more like smallpox used to be--30% fatality rate and herd immunity doesn't kick in until 85%. If we respond to that one as weakly as we responded to Covid, 12 million Americans could die.