The number of confirmed American deaths from coronavirus surpassed 600,000 yesterday, according to Johns Hopkins, yet many of the elementary facts about the worst public health disaster of our lifetime still elude us.
We still don’t know how it started, how it spread, why we were so ill-prepared, how healthcare systems were overwhelmed, why government response was inadequate, why our supply chain was insufficient, why testing and vaccine rollouts were so spotty, how an economic meltdown may have been averted, and what must be done in anticipation of the next pandemic. All monumental questions.
So two of New Jersey’s most effective lawmakers have begun the long search for answers by authoring a bill that will create an independent commission to assess America’s pandemic response and prepare the country for future catastrophes.
Sen. Bob Menendez and Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-7th Dist.) deserve our national gratitude for starting this imperative process, first by recruiting Republican co-sponsors to make it a bipartisan pursuit and then by crafting a blueprint that allows real experts rather than apparatchiks to perform a comprehensive investigation.
The logic is unassailable. Just as the Sept. 11th attacks inspired Congress to appoint a commission to identify the mistakes and make recommendations that would prevent other terrorist attacks, the proposed coronavirus committee will prepare us for the next epidemiological onslaught that the scientific community is certain will come.
Menendez, who co-authored the bill with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), put it this way: “We can never put our country, our communities and our families through this again. This isn’t about pointing fingers, but learning from our experiences and promising to do better.”
“We knew terrorism was still out there after 9/11,” said Malinowski, who sponsors the House companion bill with Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.). “So if we know there will be more pandemics, surely we can benefit from an authoritative, nonpartisan set of recommendations as Congress and our committees perform the work of legislating solutions.”
The commission will be tasked with making a full and complete accounting of the American pandemic performance – what we did right and what we did wrong, on the federal, state and local levels – and how to apply those lessons going forward.
Its mandate is broad, and it includes investigating all aspects of public health and government’s role in how the pandemic was managed. The 23-page bill omits nothing, calling for the panel to study Covid’s impact on hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, schools, minority communities, the private sector, foreign governments, and more.
The bill is also painstakingly non-partisan, starting with the selection process for the 10-member panel: The President chooses the chair, the Senate leader of the opposing party chooses the vice-chair, and the two parties then pick four more members each. No appointee could be a member of government after January 30, 2020 – because you cannot critique your own work -- and both sides must choose at least one public health expert, one economic policy expert, and one former governor.
And ultimately, the aim is to issue a report within 18 months.
No doubt, there may be some reflexive resistance by Republicans who fear political landmines resulting from the omnishambles of Donald Trump’s pandemic stewardship.
Menendez gave a blunt assessment of Trump’s performance last July 3 during a floor speech, punctuated by haymakers like this: “The president’s desperate denial, his refusal to take this pandemic seriously, his seeming inability to care about the health and wellbeing of all Americans, is as shocking as it is dangerous,” he said.
That’s not the kind of language a lawmaker often uses as he recruits support from political opponents who spend much of their time looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.
But this crisis will soon pass, and then it will be time to assess its impact, with nearly 4 million already dead worldwide and the global economy shrinking by 3.5 percent in 2020 alone. Menendez said it best in Monday’s New York Times: Government must meet the urgency of this moment. Because there will be others.
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