- News Highlight
Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense is now the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense
Now in its 5th year, the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense is taking on a new name to more accurately reflect its work and the urgency of its mission. Effective immediately, the organization now will be known as the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense.
More18 September, 2019
Commission
The Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense discusses the growing pandemic threat and the steps the United States government needs to take in order to keep America safe. Their discussion is moderated by best-selling author Max Brooks.
February 17, 2020
Coronavirus Renamed, Redefined and Under Estimated?
George spoke at a US Senate hearing on Wednesday. CNN reports she remarked that in American public health schools, students are taught to assume they are partially in the dark and to account for such unknown cases. “We’re often taught to multiply by seven or eight times what you’ve been told”, she said. “For every one case you see, there are seven or eight out there that you don’t”, she explained.
February 17, 2020
7 Things the Senate Is Hearing About Covid19, for Agents
George said emergency response agencies should get out, update and start implementing their pandemic response plans, not waiting for the situation to get worse before they act, “even if that means that they have to stand back down” if the United States escapes from having serious Covid19 problems.
February 17, 2020
Coronavirus Threat as Serious as ‘Other Issues of National Defense,’ Says Former CDC Director
In addition to medical countermeasures, Lieberman said emergency planning and response has “got to remember the need for essential medical supplies, basic stuff — there’s no point, for example, in developing vaccines that need to be injected if we don’t have enough needles. There’s no point in telling hospitals and other healthcare deliverers to provide supportive care if we don’t have supplies like saline."
February 14, 2020
Is the U.S. prepared for the coronavirus?
Asha George, a biosecurity expert says numbers in China and around the rest of the world have been significantly under-reported. George says, "For every one case you see, there’s seven or eight out there that you don’t. So, that means we’d be looking at hundreds of thousands of cases. I think that’s the scale we should be planning." Hundreds of thousands would swamp hospitals and health care workers. The next few weeks could very well decide whether the U.S. and other nations find themselves in the middle of a global pandemic.
February 14, 2020
US to Begin Testing Suspected Coronavirus Patients in 5 Cities
“I don’t think we should be planning for the onesie-twosie cases that we’ve been seeing thus far in the United States,” Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “We have to plan for the possibility that we have thousands of cases.”
February 14, 2020
Dow Tumbles as U.S. Warned of 100,000s of Coronavirus Cases
After a record-breaking day on the stock market on Wednesday, the Dow Jones took a brutal fall when trading resumed on Thursday. It comes as U.S. health experts urged Congress to take the coronavirus threat more seriously. According to one testimony, there are likely seven or eight unknown cases for every confirmed infection. Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, warned: "It may be hundreds of thousands of cases (in the U.S. eventually)."
