It’s ‘not helpful’ to view pandemic through political lens: White House COVID coordinator
Prior to joining the White House COVID-19 Response Team, Dr. Ashish Jha spent time in academia, leading the schools of public health for Harvard and then Brown. He doesn’t think he’ll be heading back to the university setting anytime soon.
“COVID is around; COVID is still with us,” he told Yahoo Finance at the 2022 All Markets Summit.
Characterizing unvaccinated or under-vaccinated individuals by their political identity, he said, isn’t helping the matter.
“It is not helpful to look at how you manage a respiratory virus that’s killed a million Americans, it is not helpful to look at that through a political lens,” he said.
Instead, people need to view COVID strictly through a public health and medical lens.
“I still don’t see this as a deeply political thing,” Jha said.
“The way I look at it is a majority of people who voted for Donald Trump have gotten vaccinated, a majority of people who voted for Joe Biden have gotten vaccinated … People are getting vaccinated. More people need to go out and get vaccinated,” he added.
The coming winter is concerning, with a mix of respiratory outbreaks pressuring health care systems. That includes an increase of new COVID variants, a stronger flu season, and RSV in kids.
“It’s going to be very hard to manage our health-care system if we don’t make some important changes,” Jha said.
That includes focusing on indoor air ventilation and filtration, in addition to the push to vaccinate and provide access to tests and treatments for free and through insurance coverage.
The administration is tracking some concerning COVID variants that could render some treatments useless, especially for immunocompromised individuals. That, paired with still low booster uptake — at just 5% — has left many experts worried about how Americans will fare in coming months.
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