U.S. Must Strengthen Biodefense, Reauthorize Laws.

• Author: King, William

Many Americans are tired of the trauma, life challenges and losses of COVID-19 and the scare of continued pandemics and catastrophic weapon of mass destruction events.

Over the past three years of living through this pandemic, more than 1.1 million Americans lost their lives, costing more than $30 trillion of national treasure.

Despite this, the nation is still dragging its feet and--in some cases --reversing efforts already made to prepare for the next pandemic.

One critical resource on preparedness is the Bipartisan Commission on Biological Defense report, "The Athena Agenda: Advancing the Apollo Program for Biodefense," released in April 2022. The commission recently issued its 2.0 version of the report and continues to provide an online status tracker of the actions taken--and more importantly--not taken.

As of last year, of the 87 recommendations, only three were completed, four were in action, 34 were in partial action and 46 were not actioned. Today that has improved slightly with the same three completed, six in action, 56 in partial action, and 22 with no action.

The Government Accountability Office published in March their snapshot report, "Biodefense: Actions Needed to Address Long Standing Challenges." The GAO's original report published in 2021 had 29 recommendations, but 21 remain unimplemented. Most GAO recommendations match those in the commission report.

In fact, since Jan. 21, 2021, when the Biden administration started its first day releasing National Security Memorandum Number 1 and its 199page "National Strategy for Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness," there have been numerous strategies and assessments released that document the threats and extensive listings of recommendations--many of them repeated from one report to the next--of what should be done to address those gaps.

The National Defense Industrial Association's National Defense and other news outlets have reported extensively and had the same conclusions. These articles, reports, assessments and strategies are not only released at the U.S. federal level--the European Union and NATO have published similar material.

Nearly two decades ago, Congress passed the Pandemic and AllHazards Preparedness Act to protect the country and prepare for natural disasters and biological, chemical and radiological threats. Since then, the provisions enacted in that legislation and subsequent reauthorizations have proven critical to shoring up public health infrastructure...