generalspeaking

Inconvenient Whistleblowers

"What we do must be done carefully with guidance from the best scientific minds. Our window of opportunity is closing."
"If we fail to improve our response now, based on science, I fear the pandemic will get worse and be prolonged."
"He [U.S. supplier of medical-grade face masks] said 'we are in deep s**t. The world is. We need to act'."
"From that moment, I knew that we were going to have a crisis for health care workers because we were not taking action.We were already behind the ball."
"And I pushed that forward to the highest level that I could of HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] and got no response." 
"My concern is if we rush too quickly [to reopen the economy and push for an untested vaccine], and consider cutting out critical steps, we may not have a full assessment of the safety of that vaccine. So, it's still going to take some time."
Rick Bright, former director, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)

He is now considered to be a contemptible 'whistleblower' by the Trump administration, a man who claims he was removed from his post with government for having raised concerns related to the preparedness for the coronavirs. He stood before a congressional hearing and warned that the United States could face "the darkest winter" should it not take steps immediately to increase its response to the global pandemic.

As he testified before a U.S. House of Representatives panel about the American preparedness for the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, President Donald Trump's Twittered assaults against his reputation and trustworthiness were still fresh. Removed in April as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services responsible for developing drugs in the battle against coronavirus, he struggled to persuade the lawmakers of the urgency of the situation.

Close to one and a quarter million Americans have contracted the novel coronavirus. The country went into lockdown, with the result being that the economy collapsed, millions of Americans lost their employment, thousands of businesses were shuttered for good, large corporations cried foul, with many going into bankruptcy, the stock market crashed, and worst of all, more than 82,000 Americans lost their lives to COVID-19.

He would "never forget", the man testified to the subcommittee, an email he received in January alerting him to a dire shortage of vital personal protection equipment for health workers to enable them to do their work in relative safety from infection. Mr. Bright had been dismissed  by President Trump who described  him as a "disgruntled employee" on Twitter, prior to the onset of the hearing. His message runs absolutely counter to that of the president who insists the U.S. economy must be re-started swiftly to rescue the country's future.

Mr. Bright stated his intention was to warn about the virus back in January only to be faced with a hostile attitude emanating from HHS executive authorities. In response, he was re=assigned to a new position with government last month. According to Mr. Bright, he was dismissed from BARDA when he went counter to the intention to push the drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as cures for COVID-19.

In his whistleblower complaint filed with a government watchdog last week, he stated his belief that the U.S. government has promoted the drugs as a "panacea" despite that they "clearly lack scientific merit". Caitlin Oakley, spokeswoman for HHS disputed this accounting, noting that Mr.Bright had been transferred to a job which entrusted to him the expenditure of $1-billion to develop diagnostic testing.

Shawn Thew / AP