Whether or not the coronavirus turns into a major U.S. health threat, it’s only a matter of time before a new virus emerges that requires a rapid government-led effort to fight its spread via diagnostic, treatment, and prevention efforts. It’s time to acknowledge the greatest challenge will not be scientific — rather, it will be to prevent politics from thwarting an effective response.

The federal government’s politicized approach to HIV, the most devastating virus in modern times, provides a case study on the impact of politics going viral. Thirty-nine years after AIDS, the related infection, was first recognized in 1981, HIV still infects roughly 40,000 Americans annually. And even as roughly 2 million Americans have become infected and almost 700,000 have died, an estimated 14% of those infected remain unaware. Almost 1% of federal tax receipts go to care for, treat, and assist HIV-infected people.