Michael R. Strain, Columnist

The CIA May Be More Useful Than the CDC in Next Epidemic

“We need to start looking at public health through the lens of national security,” says Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the FDA.

June 12, 2021 at 12:00 PM UTC

By Michael R. Strain

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Epidemic fighters.
Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg

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Earlier this week, Bloomberg columnist Michael R. Strain spoke with Dr. Scott Gottlieb, his colleague at the American Enterprise Institute and a former head of the Food and Drug Administration, about Covid’s variants, vaccination rates and coming risks. (Read Part 1 here.) In this installment, Gottlieb, who is author of “Uncontrolled Spread: Why Covid-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic,” discusses how governments should handle outbreaks this coming winter.

Michael R. Strain: First let’s set the stage. Looking back, how do you assess efforts to slow the spread of the virus?