Vaccine expert Dr. Rick Bright has some dire words for Congress about the Covid-19 pandemic and America’s potential future:
“Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history.”
“Our window of opportunity is closing,” Bright warns in testimony prepared for a Thursday hearing.
“If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities,” Bright says in the written testimony, first obtained by CNN.
Bright is already at odds with the Trump administration. He filed a whistleblower report on the pandemic after his recent ouster as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
In his prepared statement, Bright says he’ll tell lawmakers that HHS “missed early warning signals” and “forgot important pages from our pandemic playbook” early on, and ignored his warnings in the first three months of the year about a looming shortage of medical supplies.
“Bright will testify he urged HHS to ramp up production of masks, respirators and medical supplies as far back as January,” Axios reports.
Those warnings were dismissed, Bright says, and he was “cut out of key high-level meetings” on fighting Covid-19.
“The virus is out there, it’s everywhere. We need to be able to find it, to isolate it and to stop it from infecting more people,” Bright plans to tell a House health subcommittee.
“We need tests that are accurate, rapid, easy to use, low cost, and available to everyone who needs them.”
Bright’s whistleblower complaint asserts that he was removed from his post at BARDA because he disputed President Trump’s repeated claim that two related malaria drugs — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — are effective against the coronavirus.
Bright wants his job back, and there’s a chance that could happen, at least temporarily.
CNN, citing Bright’s lawyers, says “the Office of Special Counsel, which is reviewing Bright’s complaint, has determined there is reason to believe his removal was retaliatory and is recommending he be reinstated during its investigation….”
