From the article:
"‘During the summer of 2018, NSC merged three directorates into one to reduce the seam between those preparing for biological threats whether they are man-made or naturally occurring,’ said NSC spokesman John Ullyot. ‘No director-level positions were eliminated during this process, and the organization retained its subject matter expertise under a different organizational structure.’ He added that under Bolton’s replacement, Robert C. O’Brien, ‘no NSC biodefense director positions were eliminated under right-sizing.’
Critics say the changes were shortsighted in the long run. Ron Klain, the Ebola ‘czar’ appointed by Obama and a Biden campaign adviser, said biodefense and pandemic prevention require different skill sets and expertise. He said the move was akin to terminating the fire department chief and putting the firefighters in the police department. ‘The next time you have a fire, they will send a police car with a couple of firefighters in the back,’ he said.
‘A pandemic is an odd policy challenge because it straddles a lot of other things,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who served in the Obama administration, citing global health; diplomacy; domestic health policy; border and travel controls; foreign aid; and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive materials threats. 'But it is always a subordinate priority in any of those other streams, which leads to a fragmented and disconnected policy process...’”
