Everyone is raving about Biden-Harris COVID-19 task force
https://buildbackbetter.com/press-releases/biden-harris-transition-announces-covid-19-advisory-board/
While I agree it has many respected names in medicine, it seems short in two areas: communication & actual scientists w/ ID epi experience. I hope more will be added.
Short thread

Many on list are widely known high-level public health officials, including:
former surgeon general @vivek_murthy
former FDA head David Kessler

Many are policy people:
Marcella Nunez-Smith who specializes in health equity
Loyce Pace
Michael Osterholm
Julie Morita

Team has many doctors (MDs), but most don't have much epidemiology experience (if any) & most don't have infectious disease experience. Expertise in surgery & oncology are not most important skills in fighting pandemic. Patient care more useful.

These are all good people to have & administrators/policy people are helpful for administrating a huge task force, but team is missing on the ground knowledge of what is driving transmission & how to stop it via communication.

I think we need people who have direct experience working on COVID-19 epidemiology like @mlipsitch . A more junior but also stellar person would be @JustinLessler. They might not want to serve on this task force, but they would add enormously if they'd agree to do it.

In terms of communication I would have liked to see someone like @JuliaLMarcus who could greatly help w/ communication which is key to implementing many strategies to reduce transmission.

As an example, the UK has SAGE, which includes many actual scientists & human behavior people:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response-membership/list-of-participants-of-sage-and-related-sub-groups
(not that this has led to great management of COVID, sadly)

I hope there is a plan to add actual scientists doing on the ground COVID work to this task force. If not, there will continue to be a big gap between science & policy.

Would love to hear from @MackayIM or @joel_c_miller in Australia on who was instrumental in success in fighting COVID & who we should recruit to help direct our efforts.