Former Biden advisers, outside experts outline proposals for White House to go further in responding to Covid pandemic

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Mon, 2022-03-07 09:51 — mike kraft

White House must go further on new pandemic response, say former Biden advisers, outside experts The group’s road map for 'living with covid’ focuses on boosting indoor air quality, helping those with long covid and broadening the focus to other respiratory diseases. Dan Diamond 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.”

ALSO SEE: Public health experts sketch a roadmap to get from the Covid pandemic to the ‘next normal’

“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.

“Trying to eliminate covid is not realistic,” the experts write. The group also cautioned that the virus is not yet at low enough levels to be considered “endemic.”

The group consulted with the White House in January and February, and some of its recommendations are similar to those in a plan that President Biden previewed in last week’s State of the Union address. But the experts’ proposal offers much more detail on how to combat the threat from the coronavirus and other infectious diseases, said Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who coordinated the efforts.

For instance, while the White House urges additional research into long covid, the outside experts lay out nearly 20 discrete goals related to the illness, including calling on the Social Security Administration to ensure that people with long covid qualify for disability benefits; having the CDC create an official count of long covid cases; and setting up a long covid task force, led by the surgeon general or another senior official. ...

White House officials said they valued the group’s input but said they are consulting with multiple teams of experts, having solicited advice from approximately two dozen outside groups and other officials to develop the administration’s plan. ...

... recommendations include numerous positions espoused by Biden administration officials, including investing in next-generation vaccines and therapeutics, moving faster to fight new variants and keeping schools open. They also call for new dashboards that would offer the public and policymakers information on when to consider imposing health restrictions such as mask-wearing.

Compared with the White House report, the outside experts’ effort focused more on issues such as improving air quality, given evidence that poor indoor ventilation is linked to the spread of the coronavirus and other respiratory illnesses. Experts listed tactics that they said go further than the White House plan, such as requiring updated standards and building codes, publicly posting air-quality results for individual buildings, and providing subsidies to boost indoor air quality for low-income communities and households. ...

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