White House Must Go Further on New Pandemic Response, Say Former Biden Advisers, Other Expertsperts

Source: Washington Post

Vaccinate 85 percent of Americans against the coronavirus. Ensure that people experiencing long covid can get disability benefits. Develop a plan to restore trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Those are among the more than 250 discrete recommendations issued by a team of former Biden covid advisers and dozens of other outside experts on Monday, arguing that the White House must take additional steps to combat the virus and reduce the risk of other infectious diseases, with the goal of avoiding the societal disruptions that have characterized the past two years.

Many of the recommendations were not included, or offer more detail, than those issued as part of the plan last week from the White House, which laid out its own “road map” to help Americans “get back to our more normal routines.”

“The nation is not yet at the next normal,” the experts — who include six members of the Biden transition team’s covid advisory board, prominent researchers and former leaders of the CDC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — wrote in their 136-page report, warning against “complacency, inaction, or premature triumphalism” in the fight against the coronavirus. The group also launched a website, covidroadmap.org, detailing the tactics it recommends for “living with covid” and calling for a shift in focus to combat all respiratory viral illnesses.