Health Experts Zeke Emanuel and Howard Forman Joined Local Officials to Discuss the Importance of Passing COVID Relief
Washington, DC — Today, health care experts Ezekiel Emanuel and Howard Forman joined local officials from Florida and Wisconsin for a press call urging Congress to pass additional funding in order to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. During the call, speakers warned of severe consequences without additional funds to maintain testing capacity and supply lifesaving treatments. Failure to pass additional COVID funding threatens the health and safety of the American people and the nation’s ability to recover from the pandemic.
“We have had a once-in-a-century pandemic. We are breathing easier. The mortality rate is coming down, the case rate is coming down, and hospitalizations are coming down. But let’s remember we’ve been here before,” said Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Vice Provost of Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and former member of President Biden’s Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. “The last thing we need is to hesitate in our response to COVID. If we want to get to the ‘next normal’ and not have another deadly surge, we need to be prepared. Being prepared in America takes money. The request for funds to Congress is not outrageous by any stretch of the imagination. The minimal request is $15 billion. That represents $50 per American, hardly a very high burden for a pandemic.”
“As we’re moving to this ‘next normal’, we have testing, vaccines, and therapeutics. If we allow those things to fall by the wayside, even to a small degree, harm will occur to large swaths of the population that should not happen. We’re talking about the potential for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths,” said Dr. Howard Forman, professor, Yale School of Medicine. “If this money is not available, we may have hospitalizations peaking again, deaths peaking again. This is completely avoidable. Everybody should understand the necessity for this funding.”
“We’re two years into this pandemic. I think we all can agree that the political theater is getting old and people are ready to give it back to a sense of normalcy. Governor DeSantis wants to fight the federal government at every step. Let me be the first to say we need the federal government, we rely on the federal government to send us monoclonal antibody treatments,” said Shevrin Jones, State Senator for Florida’s 35th district. “These treatments are vital to make sure people who contract the illness are able to fend it off. Because of this lack of leadership from our governor who doesn’t care about protecting people or moving past the virus over his own political ambitions, we need the United States Congress to approve the additional funding.”
“We can’t allow our optimism around coming off the Omicron spike to be confused with complacency or a lack of need for the tools that helped us get to this point,” said Cory Mason, Mayor of Racine, Wisconsin. “The federal government’s role has been so important in helping us manage this crisis. Like many people across this country, we’re a community that has lost hundreds of people to this virus. If we don’t have a Congress that’s going to invest in these resources and, God forbid, a spike comes back, we’ll be dealing with it more akin to what it was like at the beginning of the pandemic.”
“In a matter of weeks, the nation’s ability to fight against COVID-19 will be severely diminished if Congress fails to approve additional funding,” said Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach. “Testing, treatment, and vaccines have allowed schools and businesses to stay open while protecting families. Lives are on the line. Congress must act now and approve additional funding to help communities stay safe.”