Biological hazard sticker on the doors to cell culture laboratory. Biohazard is a biological substance that poses a threat to the health of living organisms, primarily humans.

Biosafety Labs, Public Safety, and Politics

By Barbara Pfeffer Billauer

On May 25, 2023, merely six weeks before the Wuhan Biosafety lab lost its NIH funding amid the controversy of possible lab leaks and connection with COVID-19, the United States proudly opened the doors of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), the 14th biosafety level 4 lab in the U.S., and the first here that is capable of handling large animals.

The purpose: to research highly contagious diseases affecting animals and humans, such as foot and mouth disease. The NBAF will also feature a Biologics Development Module (BDM) to develop pilot vaccines and other countermeasures, and accelerate technology transfer to industry.

The location of this lab? Manhattan. Don’t be alarmed; it’s only Manhattan, Kansas, albeit adjacent to Kansas State University.

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Washington, DC – September 23, 2021: A person walks among the over 681,000 memorial white flags dedicated to each of the COVID Pandemic victims at the National Mall.

Running Cover for Death: Pandemic Minimizers Normalize an Inhumane Baseline

­­By Nate Holdren

Last week, David Leonhardt took to the pages of the New York Times to celebrate the latest COVID death figures, which he claims mean the U.S. is no longer in a pandemic, because there are no more “excess deaths.”

The hunger for good news is, of course, understandable amid this ongoing nightmare. But to respond to death with “smile everyone, it could have been more deaths!” is grotesque because of the disrespect to the dead and those most affected by the deaths.

It also lets the powerful off the hook, which is Leonhardt’s primary motivation, I assume. In other words, looking for good news is a political position.

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Los Angeles, California / USA - May 28, 2020: People in Downtown Los Angeles protest the brutal Police killing of George Floyd.

Learning from the ‘COVID War’

By Sam Friedman

Amid an emergent international consensus that the COVID pandemic is “over,” writings about the pandemic and its meanings have burst forth like the flowers of June.

This article will focus on one such book, Lessons from the COVID War: An Investigative Report. Produced by an eminently established collection of people, The COVID Crisis Group. The book is intelligently critical of what was done during the pandemic, but at all points it remains within the confines of what is “politically respectable.” This respectability, I argue, means that their recommendations are too narrow to protect Americans, much less the populations of the Global South, from pandemics ahead (barring unexpectedly marvelous advances in vaccine breadth and rapidity of deployment).

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Passengers on a plane wearing masks.

The Future of Public Health Law Lies in the Past — And Lawyers Need to Learn It

By Barbara Pfeffer Billauer

Currently on appeal before the 11th Circuit is the question of whether a federal Administrative Agency (here, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has the power to mandate masking on public transportation.

The case stems from the decision of a Florida judge, Kathryn Mizelle, in Health Freedom Def. Fund v. Biden, who ruled the agency overstepped its powers as enumerated under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

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Washington DC, USA - FEBRUARY 10 2021: President Joe Biden delivers remarks to Department of Defense personnel, with Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III.

4 Years into the COVID-19 Pandemic: Where We Stand

By Jennifer S. Bard

The White House is preparing to shut down their COVID Task Force this May, in conjunction with ending the public health emergency — the latest in a series of astounding and shortsighted decisions that put individual Americans at as great a risk from serious harm as a result of catching COVID-19 as at any stage in the pandemic.

By declaring the pandemic over by fiat, the government is giving up the fight when they should be redoubling their efforts. Not only is COVID still very much with us, but all existing methods of preventing infection have either been severely weakened by the virus’ mutations, or simply abandoned. Additionally, more is known of the harm COVID causes past the initial infection.

There is nothing vague or subtle about the “end” of a disease outbreak. Either cases actually disappear, as with seasonal influenza, or they are dramatically reduced through a vaccine that prevents further transmission, as happened with measles and polio. Neither event has happened here. Instead, like HIV, which continues to be an ongoing public health emergency, the virus continues to infect and mutate.

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President Joe Biden at desk in Oval Office.

Federalizing Public Health

By Elizabeth Weeks

The most promising path forward in public health is to continue recognizing federal authority and responsibility in this space. I carefully choose “recognizing,” rather than “expanding” or “moving” because it is critical to the argument that federal authority for public health already exists within the federalist structure and that employing federal authority to address public health problems does not represent a dimunition of state authority. Rather than a pie, of which pieces consumed at the federal level necessarily reduce pieces consumable at the state level, we should envision the relationship as a Venn diagram, where increasing overlap strengthens authority for promoting and protecting public health broadly.

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Atlanta, Georgia - January 28, 2022: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Unmasking Public Health

By Jane Moriarty

One of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s stated “essential public health services” is to “create, champion, and implement policies, plans, and laws that impact health.”

Yet, as the U.S. slogs through its third COVID winter, one thing is clear: personal responsibility and autonomy are at the heart of public health messaging. As CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky famously said, “your health is in your hands.”

In other words, CDC and other public health bodies now highlight personal responsibility and autonomy, and minimize the institutional ability to champion policies and laws that would improve the health and safety of the citizenry.

Given the comparatively poor results that the U.S. has had compared to other similarly-situated countries that focus more on the common good, it is time for our public health entities to reinvigorate their role as a force of legal and moral suasion to protect the public’s health.

The moral value of protecting the health of the public should be at the forefront of their messaging. Personal responsibility and autonomy are no match for the reality of commodified and unavailable health care, internet disinformation, health vulnerabilities, age-related vulnerabilities, the lack of paid sick leave, poverty, and the plight of the institutionalized.

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ACCRA, GHANA: April 23, 2020 - The testing of samples for the coronavirus in a veterinary lab in Accra, Ghana.

Does It Really Matter How the COVID-19 Pandemic Started?

By Barbara Pfeffer Billauer

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, much air time and social media space has been allocated to the lab leak vs. natural spillover dispute regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

To summarize briefly, the question is whether the pandemic was caused by a leak from a biosafety level (BSL) four lab in Wuhan, China, or whether it arose naturally as a consequence of a virus jumping from a bat to an animal and then to humans.

Given that the “truth” will likely never be known, and certainly not provable, the question becomes: is it important to seriously consider the lab leak theory?

The answer, I suggest, is an unabashed yes — but not for the reason you might think. The question is important prospectively, not retrospectively. Debating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic is a fool’s errand. Considering laboratory accidents writ large, however, is important, as they remain a potent threat to international biosecurity.

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Bill of Health - Gavel on mask during pandemic, class action lawsuits during pandemic

Relying on the Unreliable? COVID-19 Claims Can’t Proceed Without a Proper Standard of Care

By Michelle Richards

In the United States, the imposition of tort liability for the transmission of an infectious disease goes back more than a century. It is no surprise, therefore, that similar claims have been filed for damages arising from the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.

However, in order for these claims to be adjudicated fairly, they must be judged against a standard of care. A standard of care provides a benchmark for the level of caution a reasonable party would take in particular circumstances. If the standard of care is not met, liability may be imposed.

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