Have you noticed during this once-in-a-century pandemic that the secretary of health and human services has been basically a nonentity?
Health expert Eric Topol noticed. Topol, a doctor who had high hopes for President Joe Biden, penned an op-ed in Science magazine criticizing Biden’s failures. And Topol zooms in especially on HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
“Mr. Becerra has also shirked other responsibilities. There has been obvious in-fighting between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the CDC, and the White House COVID-19 Response Team about issues ranging from booster shot recommendations to isolation guidelines that omit any testing for the virus. A leader of HHS should be mediating such conflicts, with the goal of a single, consistent, and unified public message. That, along with data that justify government decisions, would promote clarity and trust.”
Topol isn’t the first to note that Becerra has been absent from the COVID response and that this absence has been costly. NBC reported in December on the “invisible” HHS secretary, whose “first visit to the NIH was eight months into the job.”
Think about all the things HHS could have done in this time. It could have ramped up rapid testing in the fall. It could have pushed for faster approval and production of Pfizer’s therapeutic drug. It could have studied the efficacy of tests and vaccines on omicron. It could have shortened quarantines and isolation earlier and communicated why it was doing so.
HHS didn’t do any of these things, in part because HHS is headed by Xavier Becerra, who has no knowledge, expertise, or will to lead on public health issues.
Nobody is surprised, because nobody thought Becerra would do a good job at HHS. Biden didn’t choose an HHS secretary to fight the pandemic. Biden thought that he could ignore COVID once enough people got vaccines (I admit, so did I), and so he appointed a culture warrior to head HHS. Becerra’s job was to champion abortion and wage war on pro-lifers, as he did as attorney general of California.
As state attorney general and as a member of Congress, Becerra has used his government power to try to force pro-lifers and religious organizations to pay for abortions and contraception. He also worked to pressure pro-life doctors and Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.
Biden valued abortion and the culture war over fighting the pandemic. We are all suffering because of it.
