Congressional Budget Responses to the Pandemic: Fund Health Care, Not Warfare.

King, Jonathan; Goldenberg, David; Goldstein, Gary; Hartung, William; Royer, Catherine; Sundberg, Eric; van der Ziel, Cornelia; Van Elzakker, Michael; Roberts, Richard

The coronavirus outbreak is not the first crisis to affect a large swath of the nation's population: the Great Depression, World War II, and the HIV epidemic did so previously. Of the national responses to each of these examples, perhaps the most relevant would be the Manhattan Project model, as proposed by Senator Edward J. Markey (D, MA) and Peter L. Slavin, MD, of Mass General Hospital.1 In 1943 the government diverted tens of billions of dollars from civilian programs to the project to build the atomic bomb. What the COVID-19 pandemic requires is the reverse: the diversion of a substantial chunk of the more than $700 billion appropriated for the Pentagon's military budget to the biomedical, public health programs desperately needed to limit the current coronavirus outbreak and prevent future pandemics. Congress needs to recognize the actual challenges to our national security and thereby sustain our people's health and promote a prosperous and just economy. We are not in danger of being invaded by Russians, Chinese, Venezuelans, or Iranians; we are in danger of having the fabric of our society undermined by our failure to invest in and protect our national health and welfare. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print November 19, 2020: e1-e2. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306048).