Depending on where you live, it may be week 3, 4, 5 of lockdown—and you might have exhausted your Netflix queue. Luckily, we have two things for you: a new episode of the I AM BIO Podcast explaining how we were warned about the possibility of this pandemic—and a video discussion with experts about how we move forward.
“We were warned.” That’s the message of the latest episode of the I AM BIO Podcast, featuring two leaders of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, which was founded in 2014 to study the state of biodefense in the United States and provide recommendations for how to prepare for situations like this pandemic. (BIO’s Jim Greenwood is a commissioner and founding member.)
“All of this was perfectly predictable,” said Dr. Asha George, Executive Director of the Commission. “We should have known that the coronavirus was going to mutate and that it was going to do what viruses do: mutate enough to infect people, spread broadly, be able to replicate, and not really kill as many of the hosts as a highly pathogenic virus could, like Ebola.”
Commission Co-Chair Sen. Joe Lieberman agrees: It was “so clear that something bad was going to happen eventually…in terms of a naturally occurring biological attack” such as an infectious disease outbreak.
“We don’t have time” to take months and years to analyze what happened and make changes to government, Dr. George continued. “We have to treat this with even more urgency than we did after 9/11—because the next biological event could very well happen now.”
The good news: We can come together to fight this, said Sen. Lieberman.
Experts discussed how to do this during last week’s WuXi AppTec Online Forum, which was widely viewed around the world, as scientists and CEOs explained what they’re doing to fight the pandemic.
In fact, the biotechnology sector has around 200 COVID-19 projects in process, with a lot of cross-border and cross-industry collaboration, said Jim Greenwood during the forum.
Jim’s Judgment: We have just thrown ourselves at this disease with every intent to defeat it—and defeat it we will. – BIO President & CEO Jim Greenwood
Listen to the podcast at www.bio.org/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts including Apple, Google, and Spotify.
Watch the WuXi AppTec Forumhere.
More Health Care News:
Reuters: Novartis, U.S. drug regulator agree to malaria drug trial against COVID-19
“Novartis has won the go-ahead from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct a randomized trial of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.”
STAT: NIH partners with 16 drug companies in hopes of accelerating COVID-19 treatments and vaccines
“The partnership, to be known as Accelerating Covid-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines, or ACTIV, is meant to standardize research between the federally funded researchers and a broad array of drug companies, and prioritize research into drugs and vaccines that are having high near-term potential.”
The New York Times (Opinion): The story of remdesivir
“[T]here should be no big-pharma haters in pandemics,” writes columnist Bret L. Stephens.
