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āIām LIVIDā: Ranney, other docs speak out against cuts to COVID preparedness
āCongress, please fund these plans. š Waiting until another surge hits, is already too late.ā
On Tuesday, White House officials warned that the United States will soon run out of funding for future COVID booster shots, testing efforts, and new treatments if Congress doesn’t pass spending legislation.
Now, experts are warning of the potential disastrous consequences of that funding drying up.
Dr. Megan Ranney, the associate dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, shared her outrage at that possibility on Twitter yesterday.
“For the past 3 months, we in medicine & #publichealth have been asking to plan ahead,” Ranney wrote. “Take the lessons from the last surge & apply them to the future, so we never again end up with overwhelmed hospitals & 1000s of #covid19 deaths each day.”
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Ranney said the waning of the omicron surge gave her hope — finally, she thought, there was a lull that the United States could use to try to plan for future surges. She said she was hopeful the country could distribute vaccines equitably, make sure the supply-chain is functioning, establish good metrics for surges, support healthcare workers, and improve communication.
She said she was “enthused” by the White House’s release of a new COVID plan two weeks ago. When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed the metrics on community spread, she said she was comforted that those at highest risk would have access to treatments.
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But now, Ranney wrote Tuesday, she is “absolutely livid” at the “brinkmanship being played by Congress.”
Congress passed a $1.5 trillion dollar federal spending bill last week, but left out the White House’s request for $22.5 billion in funding for COVID efforts. In a background call with reporters yesterday, senior White House officials warned of the repercussions lack of funding will have.
Covid Preparedness:
Without additional funding, senior administration officials said the U.S. will not be able to purchase boosters for everyone, will need to cancel plans to purchase additional monoclonals and will run out of the treatment in late May, will end the fund that pays doctors to treat uninsured people in early April, will not be able to maintain domestic testing capacity past June, and won’t be able to extend COVID aid abroad as planned.
“We have been clear: We hoped Congress would provide these resources, as lawmakers have done multiple times on a bipartisan basis under the prior administration,” said a senior administration official. “Further inaction will set us back; leave us unprepared — less prepared; and cost us more lives.”
Ranney said, “It is simply inexcusable that we may be RIGHT BACK WHERE WE WERE TWO YEARS AGO due to lack of funding for the basics,” including tests, vaccines, treatment, and data.
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“I hope that we pull back before what little safety net we have, against #covid19, is shredded,” she wrote. “Congress, please fund these plans. 🙏 Waiting until another surge hits, is already too late.”
Ranney isn’t alone in her concern. Prominent experts across the country, including Michael Osterhold, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota and former COVID adviser to President Joe Biden, warn that politics could leave the United States chronically unprepared again, reported STAT.
Locally, doctors are also worried. Dr. Michael Mina, a former assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and now chief science officer at biotech software company eMed, said now is not the time to stop funding response efforts.
Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, took a more sarcastic approach.
Read Ranney’s full thread here:
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