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| 1.30.24
BILL: Disease X Act of 2023 (H.R.3832)
Tell your reps to support or oppose the bill.
H.R. 3832 - Disease X Act of 2023
Bill Overview
- Title: Disease X Act of 2023
- Sponsored by: Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), with co-sponsors Reps. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), and Susie Lee (D-Nev.).
- Purpose: To enhance the U.S.'s preparedness for viral threats that have the potential to cause a pandemic.
Current Status
- The bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives and is currently under consideration by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Key Elements of the Bill
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Enhance Preparedness for Pandemic Threats:
- The bill aims to improve U.S. readiness for potential viral threats that could lead to a pandemic. This is achieved by expanding the focus and capabilities of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
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Expansion of BARDA’s Priorities:
- The bill designates BARDA to focus on viral threats that could potentially cause a pandemic.
- It broadens the scope of BARDA's innovation grants and contracts to include those that support research and development of manufacturing technology for medical countermeasures against viruses, especially respiratory viruses, with pandemic potential.
- The bill designates BARDA to focus on viral threats that could potentially cause a pandemic.
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Strategic Initiatives:
- The bill expands BARDA's strategic initiatives to encompass advanced research, development, and procurement of countermeasures and products targeting viruses with the potential to cause a pandemic.
Supports and Critiques
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Support for the bill:
- The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security commended the bill for its bipartisan nature. Supporters said the legislation is a critical step in enhancing America's preparedness for future pandemics and protecting the nation.
- Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), bill sponsor, said:
“Now, three and a half years after the first COVID case was discovered in the U.S., more than one million Americans have tragically lost their lives to the virus. We should urgently be looking for ways to do better moving forward – to ensure we’re never caught flat-footed again."
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Critiques of the bill:
- Critics have argued that the bill could lead to unnecessary public fear. Observers had initial worries that Disease X was an up-and-coming disease. WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus assured the public that Disease X is a placeholder name for a future biological threat.
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I think it's a very good idea to have a law that includes the study of any possible pandemics that might be spreading. If we had this, we might have had a heads up on the Covid pandemic. We would have a better understanding of them. We would know exactly how much of a threat they are. Covid was not fully understood. Some took it too seriously, others did not take it seriously enough.
Due to Ebola the Obama Administration wrote a plan to prevent pandemic or spreading of diseases. Did we have an outbreak of ebola. But since Obama was black (half black) trump did not follow it. He thought he knew better.
He obviously did not.
If we are going to have a plan we need doctors who specializes in infectious diseases to participate in drafting a standard operation plan.
I personally like how South Korea handle COVID. There wer other countries who did not have a pandemic that we need to learn from.
Iceland actually followed the Obama's plan to prevent pandemic in their country so it work.
This shows racism kills when we do not listen, discredit, or ignore plans made by other ethnic groups.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital money for his business!
Trump and Kushner's plan was, Coronavirus kill more blacks and Latinos, than whites, so they played down the severity of the coronavirus to the American public! This was political genocide of blacks and Latinos a two to one for whites! Trump has no problem killing people, that don't kiss the ring of Trump!
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Yes. Whatever we can do to be prepared for the next pandemic should be done. We can't be caught with our pants down like we were with COVID and had GD Trump not eliminated Obama's pandemic program we'd probably been prepared. Thanks to Trump we had nothing in place to deal with the pandemic and again thans to his stupidity and inaction and outright lies we were basically left hanging in the wind. Make no mistake about it Trump is to blame for thousands of needless deaths, not to mention the stupidity of his MAGA crowd that wouldn't take precautions to decrease transmission.
If being "prepared" for the "next 'potential' pandemic" means continuing the policy that was used during the last one, then this bill MUST be stopped. The policies used were an absolute disaster. We harmed countless children's education and development, put thousands of small business out of business and changed our society so that we will never be the same. This wasn't because of the disease but rather, how we dealt with it, that did the most damage. The last thing we should do is to expand upon it. This bill's wording is also eerily similar to that in the W.H.O.'s Pandemic Treaty and it's Health Regulations amendments and it's attempt at more control and power. Government has NO place involving it's self in health matters as the individual is master of their own and each decides for themself how they care for it. There is nothing more authoritarian than a state dictating something so personal as the care one's health. Vote NO!
This week is rare disease week on Capitol Hill. As a person who is battling Myasthenia Gravis & now Meduullary Thyroid Cancer, two rare diseases, I urge my representatives to support help & research for those battling these overlooked, serious diseases.
If you are too, or know someone who is, here is more information:
https://everylifefoundation.org/rare-advocates/rare-disease-week/
Step #1 should be to restore the protocols and early detection and early wanring teams that #45 disbanded and disabled! That WOULD have been our protection against COVID even BECOMING a pandemic, and would protect the world TODAY had it not been destroyed. #45 was able to destroy it because it was not required by law, and it is time now to FIX that!
Much needed bipartisan legislation (2 democrats, 2 republicans) given the disorganized response to Covid which has a better than average chance of making it out of committee (12% versus 2023 average of 11%) and being enacted (4% versus 2023 average of 2%).
"This bill expands the priorities of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to specifically include viral threats that have the potential to cause a pandemic."
"In particular, the bill expands the scope of innovation grants and contracts that may be awarded by BARDA to specifically include those that support research and development of certain manufacturing technology for medical countermeasures against viruses, including respiratory viruses, with pandemic potential. It also expands BARDA's authorized strategic initiatives to include advanced research, development, and procurement of countermeasures and products to address viruses with pandemic potential."
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/hr3832
I strongly support this bill. We don't need to be caught with our pants down again(thanks to Trump's eliminating Obama's pandemic group) when another looming pandemic hits. We have the capability to be better prepared and we need to implement and expand that capavility.
Better to have a plan and not need it, than a tRump administration who tossed the pandemic handbook.
I hope the bill addresses mask and medication production in the USA.
Dear Representatives,
I wholeheartedly endorse the objectives of H.R.3832, the Disease X Act of 2023. I urge you to vote to pass it.
This Bill must indicate a robust backing for the CDC and a reinvigorated commitment to our ties with the health surveillance efforts of all nations, as well as those of the United Nations. It should be an "all hands-on" for those with the medical science expertise across international borders to mitigate threats of potential pandemics.
I trust that there will be the necessary funding for the administrative and the monitoring systems, and for the the labs put on overdrive.
Best Regards.
The idea is a good one. That being said, we have a bought and paid for SCOTUS, Special Interest groups buy our politicians and we have a Nazi quoting Fascist 2nd party (THE GOP) in place....so, at this point I do not trust any branch of the Government at all.
The idea of the Disease X Act of 2023 is good.
It purportedly gets the country ready to deal with another pandemic like Covid and the "Spanish Flu".
But the devil is in the details.
So, as a retired physician, I would have liked more information about what this legislation says.
Also, I hope this bill has some plan to undo the Trumpist sabotage of Americans' trust in Public Health Procedures and Vaccines
One of the reasons COVID-19 was so devastating to the United States was our lack of preparedness for it, exacerbated by the incompetent Trump administration which had scrapped plans for just such a case.
We should have a permanent policy of readiness and preparation for another pandemic, whether it be a coronavirus, a flu outbreak, or a disease such as ebola. We do not know when the next viral outbreak will happen nor how damaging it can be, and we cannot wait until it's started to ramp up efforts to stop it.
Since Americans are doing a terrible job of staying vaccinated and ready, it's the government's responsibility to have a plan in case the next virus evades our resistances.