I desperately want to support an organization that promises to Guard Against Pandemics, because it’s so vastly important. But, the only concrete “use of funds” here I see is “donating to Elizabeth Warren and Anna Eshoo” and I’ve read a lot of what Warrens thinks we should do, and it seems.… underwhelming? It seems like a ton of it is “giving people money to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic” and almost nothing about preventing actual pandemics?
Given that it seems pretty obvious (now) that comprehensive test/trace/isolate programs and rapid vaccine development are the keys to actually stopping pandemics, has Warren supported something like this? Pandemics are contagious diseases that spread based on our collective immunity. Any real plan focuses on preventing that spread and increasing our immunity. Her plans involve lots of stimulus, which is perhaps a good idea, but not exactly going to stop/slow a pandemic.
And do we think that any future pandemic is going to be guarded against without a reform of the CDC and FDA? Does Warren support that?
Instead of having “support Elizabeth Warren” as a goal, why not just write up a public list of the (boring, simple, relatively cheaper than what we did) policies that we absolutely know would stop/slow a pandemic (and were indeed heavily pushed by lots of very public people) and then donate/support those politicians who publicly signal their agreement for it, and who push policies that support it? Wasn’t it the Club For Growth that had that No New Taxes pledge that pols could sign? Something like that.
Brian Moore
Karma: 28
Definitely—she is very much a “when you have a hammer, all problems look like nails” and her hammer is named “trillions of dollars and nice-sounding government agencies.” And moreover, I think her error there is part of a wider issue, where we did see the current pandemic as a nail and tried mightily to hammer it with trillions of dollars and government agencies with Control Diseases in the title. But she doesn’t necessarily understand that the CDC and FDA, rather than “underfunded and therefore unable to combat the pandemic, therefore we can accomplish Pandemic Prep by giving them more money” were actually “highly funded, and used a lot of that money to delay/hinder pandemic response, both extremely early on and to this day.” If GAP is going to persuade her to reform the CDC and FDA so they can fight the (next) pandemic (literally the CDC’s job already), then I’m all for that. But I need to see that before I donate any money.