WASHINGTON (CN) — There weren’t two ways about it, the world was about to be in “deep shit.” This proclamation in an email to ousted vaccine chief Dr. Rick Bright from a supplier of N95 masks was a moment that still haunts him today as the death toll from Covid-19 rises above 80,000.
Bright told Congress on Thursday that his advocacy of science and safety went ignored by the White House, placing the public health in danger.
It was January when Mike Bowen of Prestige Ameritech alerted Bright that the national stockpile of N95 respirator masks was “completely decimated.”
“We’re in deep shit. The world is in deep shit. We need to act,” Bowen had written to Bright.
The former director for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development authority, a Health and Human Services agency that develops drugs, vaccines and treatment protocols, pushed the warning forward to the “highest levels,” Bright testified Thursday.
“And I got no response,” he said. “From that moment, I knew we were going to have crisis for our health care workers because we were not taking action. We were already behind the ball, that was our last window of opportunity to turn on that production to save the lives of those health care workers and we didn’t act.”
What he received from officials inside the Health and Human Services Department was “indifference” and “excuses,” he said. He knew in January that the strategic national stockpile in a crisis demanded over 3.5 billion N95 masks.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar was suggesting only a small fraction of that was needed publicly. As the weeks wore on, most interactions Bright had with Azar or Robert Kadlec, the department’s assistant secretary for preparedness and response, became more disturbing.
“They did not believe there was a critical urgency to procure the masks,” Bright said. “They conducted a few surveys, talked to a few hospitals and said they didn’t yet see a critical shortage.”
At one point, when Bright learned from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield that a swab shortage was looming because that stockpile was also depleted, he went to Azar.
“I don’t want to deal with swabs right now,” Azar allegedly told Bright.
So he went to Peter Navarro, President Donald Trump’s economic adviser, and the men partnered with the Defense Department to get the swabs Bright sought.
When it came to masks, the response was equally blasé.
“They indicated if they noticed a shortage, they would simply change the guidelines to better inform those who shouldn’t be wearing the masks and save the masks for the health care workers. My response was, ‘I cannot believe you can sit and say that with a straight face.’ It’s absurd,” Bright testified.
Bright's removal from BARDA, he alleges, was a response to his insistence that the federal government meet the Covid-19 pandemic head-on with science and the investment of taxpayer funds into treatment vetted by experts, not those motivated by political expediency or profiteering.
“Not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” Bright said in his prepared remarks to the House Subcommittee on Health.
Beyond allegations of cronyism running “unfiltered” during a period of national crisis, Bright also offered recommendations he believes will help stave off “the darkest winter in modern history.”
“First and foremost, we need to be truthful with the American people. They want the truth. They can handle the truth. Truth, no matter how unpleasant, decreases the fear generated by uncertainty,” Bright said in opening remarks to lawmakers.
Asked later by subcommittee Chairwoman Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., what he meant by the “darkest winter,” Bright said he feared that time was running out because the nation has lacked cohesion around a coordinated attack plan.
