Maybe this will be it's own thread? I dunno. Does anyone but me
care?
The Biden administration is reorganizing the federal health department to create an independent division that would lead the nation’s pandemic response, amid frustrations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The move elevates a roughly 1,000-person team — known as the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR — into a separate division, charged with coordinating the nation’s response to health emergencies, according to seven people briefed on the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.
The reorganization allows the division “to mobilize a coordinated national response more quickly and stably during future disasters and emergencies while equipping us with greater hiring and contracting capabilities,” Dawn O’Connell, who leads ASPR and would run the new division, wrote to staff members Wednesday afternoon. The emailed memo was shared with The Washington Post.
What's the deal?
The creation of the new Administration of Strategic Preparedness and Response, which is expected to be phased in over two years, comes at a time of growing concern about the federal government’s ability to respond to health emergencies — whether a once-in-a-century pandemic driven by a novel virus such as SARS-CoV-2, or an outbreak of a long-identified pathogen such as monkeypox, which has established treatments and vaccines.
I would not describe the CDC as...nimble, so I understand what they're doing. But as I keep reminding everyone, public health is a state issue. I'm not sure how creating a separate entity at the federal level is going to change anything when a state refuses to do anything related to stopping an infectious disease from spreading out of control.
But public health experts say that a critical part of pandemic response is working with state and local health agencies, and note that the CDC has a far stronger relationship with those front-line teams than ASPR. The emergency-response office also has faced scrutiny over its own operations.
I'd agree with this, yes.
Several congressional panels are already scrutinizing the pandemic performance of ASPR, the CDC and other health agencies. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who leads the Senate’s health committee, on Wednesday criticized the Biden administration’s response to the monkeypox outbreak and asked for an urgent briefing on its strategy.
Meanwhile, some senior Biden administration officials said they were unaware of the plan to reorganize the department, which was approved by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and has been held close by his deputies.
Yup. Sounds about right.
EDIT: And I suppose to add new information:
Number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 reaches 42,894, the highest since February