The Biden administration on Tuesday released a “roadmap” for maintaining government defenses against infectious diseases, just as President-elect Donald Trump pledges to dismantle some of them. The 16-page report recaps steps taken in the last four years against COVID-19, mpox and other diseases, including vaccination efforts and the use of wastewater and other measures to spot signs of erupting disease outbreaks. It’s a public version of a roughly 300-page pandemic-prevention playbook that Biden officials say they are providing to the incoming administration. Biden officials touted the steps they took to halt or prevent disease threats, but some public heath researchers offer a more mixed assessment of the administration’s efforts. Several experts, for example, said not nearly enough has been done to make sure an expanding bird flu pandemic in animals doesn’t turn into a global health catastrophe for people. “Overwhelmingly you’ve heard a lot of frustration by outside experts that we’ve been under-reacting to what we see as really serious threat,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. Public health experts worry the next administration could do less Trump and his team plan to slash government spending, and Trump has endorsed prominent vaccine detractors for top government health posts. During the campaign last year, Trump told Time magazine that he would disband the White House office focused on pandemic preparedness, calling it “a very expensive solution to something that won’t work.” Public health researchers also point to Trump’s first administration, when the White House in 2018 dismantled a National Security Council pandemic unit. When COVID-19 hit two years later, the government’s disjointed response prompted some experts to argue that the unit could have helped a faster and more uniform response. In 2020, during the pandemic, Trump officials moved to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization. President Joe Biden reversed the decision, but Trump’s team is expected to do it again. Experts say such a move would, among other things, hurt the ability to gain information about emerging new outbreaks before they comes to U.S. shores. Officials with the Trump transition team did not respond to emails requesting information about its pandemic planning. Many public health experts praise Trump for “Operation Warp Speed,” which helped spur the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines. But several also noted that decades of planning and research under previous administrations laid the groundwork for it. What do Biden officials say they accomplished? COVID-19 vaccines did not start to trickle out to the public until after Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election, and it was the Biden administration that stood up what it describes as the largest free vaccination program in U.S. history. “President Biden came to office amidst the worst public health crisis in more than a century,” said Dr. Paul Friedrichs, director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, in a statement. “He partnered with stakeholders across the nation and turned it around, ending the pandemic and saving countless lives.” Friedrichs’s office was established by Congress in 2022. He said the administration has “laid the foundation for faster and more effective responses to save lives now and in the future.” What has been done to prepare for bird flu and other threats? The pandemic office, which released the report Tuesday, said it has taken steps to fight bird flu, […]