Op-Ed reminds Senators that public health is not a hard science, and that partisan bickering doesn’t lead to improved healthcare policy.
The US rates so poorly in health outcomes that there is a lot of low hanging fruit to be plucked, if Big Pharma and its minions allow us to do so
From STAT, authored by Steven Phillips, M.D., M.P.H., who is vice president for science and strategy at the COVID Collaborative.
… Policymakers should recognize that public health is not hard science, and that the guardians of evidence are subject to the same ambient political influence as the rest of us. Positive societal outcomes can be achieved through borrowing from both the left and the right’s cherished agendas. Evidence can be far more flexible in supporting public health best practice than either party acknowledges.
The political incentive to do better starts with accepting bipartisan responsibility for the country’s dismal Covid pandemic performance. Why did the U.S. go from first to worst? This country was ranked first in the world in pandemic preparedness in 2019 by the Global Health Security Index, but by March 2023 had the world’s worst Covid mortality rate. The U.S. also fared poorly in the global arena. In March 2021, the Foreign Policy index ranked the U.S. an abysmal 31st out of 36 countries in pandemic response. We endured the worst of both worlds: both a major preventable human toll and a mitigable enormous harm in economic and social development. Rather than dictating a national reckoning, this debacle has inspired only more partisan finger-pointing.
The parties now need each other in driving a more harmonized vetting process that leads to improved health performance. This should be achievable through judicious compromise, not winner-take-all arm-wrestling. The American people would be the prime beneficiaries.