Partisanship Might Prevent Us From Preparing for the Next Pandemic

I'm hoping so much of what comes out of this is a wake-up call. So much of the newfound understanding and appreciation for the science behind dealing with these diseases, appreciation of healthcare workers and first responders. I mean, if there's any bright lining to this, that's what I'm really hoping for, is that people wake up and recognize the good work that people like you have been doing. And also, you know, that this is where we live in strange times and these things can happen again and we need to be prepared and we need to put a lot of emphasis and effort and thought to that as a whole, as a whole society. Right, that's right. I think, you know, maybe this will help us reassess some of our values and, you know, appreciate some of the things that the healthcare professions especially are doing and, you know, you're seeing people volunteer, you know, they're going right, you know, right into the belly of the beast. You know, people, you know, who might have subspecialty practices, they just said to hell with it, I'm just going to put on my N95 mask and my PPE and dive in and help. That's really moving. Why have there been such a shortage of masks and safety equipment for healthcare workers? And how did this ever happen? Well, we just, we didn't get ready for the surgeon time. I think, you know, I think, you know, I'm sort of holding back trying to throw stones at this agency or this person or this group because we don't really know what happened. I think it's going to be really important that Congress after this conduct an investigation, not from the standpoint of prosecuting people or calling them out, but just say, hey, what the hell went wrong here? And how do we avoid this again? I mean, the problems with the testing and not having all the protective equipment. Now we're getting geared up and mobilizing industry, but what could we have done better, especially in that window period when things were collapsing in Wuhan and the other cities in central China, when we knew this was going to be bad and we knew this could become, you know, one of the great pandemic threats. You know, why, how could we have better use those six weeks in order to get ready and what didn't we do? And now's not the time to do it because the last thing you want to do is start distracting people and worrying about, you know, congressional hearings and that sort of thing. But when all this is said and done, it has to be done in the right spirit. And again, we have to figure out a way to stop these partisan lines and say, you know, as a country, we've got to figure out how to work together. I know that sounds Pollyanna-ish, but you know, when I was in, you know, before I moved to Texas a decade ago, I was chair of microbiology at George Washington University for 10 years. And I worked with Congress a lot to get legislation passed around neglected tropical diseases. And it was a different Washington then. I mean, I would go, you know, to Sam Brownback's prayer breakfast, Sam Brownback's governor of Kansas before we sent her from Kansas, very conservative, public and senator, walk across the hall and go talk to Senator Leahy's people from Vermont or Sherrod Brown's people. And you know, far to the left. And nobody thought any twice about that. You know, we all knew we had to go across the aisle to work together. And it's just not happening anymore. And it's tearing apart our country. So I hope the other thing that we get out of this is figuring out a way that Republicans start talking to Democrats again and Democrats talk to Republicans again and figure that out as well.