Bird Flu and the Flight of Governmental Capacity

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Ernita Joaquin & Nathan Myers
June 28, 2024

The detection of bird or avian flu (H5N1) in multiple species, including four human cases as of this writing, raises the question: How prepared are we now for pandemics, compared to 2020? Amid another congressional grilling of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States needs to mount the kind of multi-agency, whole-of-government response that Fauci advocates. Explanations as to why our capacity to do so remains limited can be found in the book, American Administrative Capacity: Decline, Decay, and Resilience by professors Maria Joaquin and Thomas Greitens.

It begins by recognizing that America’s ability to carry out what Abraham Lincoln called the legitimate object of government—“to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves—in their separate, and individual capacities”—was eroded through years of deconstruction by former President Donald Trump. Putting the pieces back together for scientific institutions could take decades, even as new threats develop.

To confront H5N1, the government must possess (reconstitute) the capacity in five mutually reinforcing dimensions: (1) problem solving, (2) management, (3) administrative conservatorship, (4) communication and (5) accountability. Problem solving is the capacity to connect the dots, make competent inferences and assessments and induce consensus in framing problems and solutions. To invigorate this area, the Union of Concerned Scientists watched the Biden Administration restaff several STEM agencies to pre-Trump levels. Yet virus testing, the first shoe to drop in 2020, remains muted at the local level, hampering surveillance of H5N1 in farming communities, where immigration issues could induce under-reporting.

This brings up management capacity, which encompasses coordination, resources, human and other mission support systems. Pandemic budgets are easily held hostage in a polarized, federal system. We have not yet fixed the disconnect between the public health system and the health-care system in data sharing, seen during COVID. Today, a similar delay is experienced regarding sharing of H5N1 virus sequence data between agencies. As we race to understand bird flu, COVID lessons by the CDC, FDA, USDA and other actors in scaling up collaborative and productive efforts will be tested.

Third, administrative conservatorship, a term coined by Larry Terry, resides in agencies that serve and preserve the connection between people and mission. They uphold their distinctive competence, morale and values. We have seen federal efforts to install Scientific Integrity Officers, shield whistleblowers and revive ethics and grievance bodies. But this capacity is fragile as politicization exerts a powerful disincentive to government scientists at the national and local levels. Fears of “deconstruction, part 2” and Trump’s campaign to shut down pandemic preparedness units cast a shadow upon discussions of bird flu and other environmental threats.

Fourth, the capacity for communication and engagement concerns the society-government nexus, to make bureaucrats coherent, ensure the ability for joint action and inspire public buy-in. With H5N1, reaching at-risk communities at the intersection of immigration and anti-vaccine rhetoric would require supportive, equitable strategies, whether here or abroad. H5 vaccines are aplenty; but who would come forward? CDC Director Mandy Cohen recognizes that rebuilding trust is paramount. Fauci’s experience taught him that we need to figure out “how to talk to one another again, before the next pandemic hit.”

Finally, accountability is illustrated by Paul Appleby’s words in 1947: “the process of adjusting administration to popular criticism, attitudes and needs, a process that goes on, and should go on, every minute of every day at every level, within the limits of law and fair dealing.” Learning in the face of novelty, communicating what is being done, and rendering account are core crisis accountability tasks. As with COVID, federalism complicates role definition in confronting bird flu. Agricultural states that dislike CDC monitoring for H5N1 among farmers seek to have it dealt with as a workforce issue under the purview of USDA, reframing the crisis and who is responsible at such a critical juncture.

Fully restoring American administrative capacity to confront H5N1 is elusive due to layers of mistrust, the profound damage to public administration during Trump’s presidency and the failure to harvest crisis lessons due to pervasive denialism. But there is another thread running beneath the administrative injuries in the Executive branch: the brokenness within the First Branch. This warrants a separate article, but in each dimension of capacity, regardless of presidential restoration, the brunt of an undone Congress will be felt. Indeed, some public investigations carried out long after the COVID crisis has ended, such as Fauci’s, look more like efforts to steer away from the institutional crises that met the coronavirus, and which still lie in wait for the bird flu pandemic. In view of those, to quote infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm, “without a doubt, we are less prepared.”

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M. Ernita Joaquin is an Associate Professor of Public Administration in the School of Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at San Francisco State University. She publishes in the fields of executive politics, governance, crisis learning, and public affairs education. She holds graduate degrees from Northern Illinois University, University of the Philippines, and The University of Manchester. Email: [email protected]

Nathan Myers, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Master of Public Administration at Indiana State University. His areas of research include public policy, public health emergency preparedness, and the governance of biotechnology. He is the author of Pandemics and Polarization: Implications of Partisan Budgeting for Responding to Public Health Emergencies and numerous related articles. Myers is a graduate of Knox College (BA), University of Illinois at Springfield (MPA), and University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Ph.D.)

Email: [email protected]; Twitter: nagremye1980

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