Funding frustrations

Two years after the pandemic started, what have we learned about funding the Covid fightback?

As Republicans and Democrats scrambled to get a $1.5 trillion appropriations bill over the finish line last week to keep federal spending going, one important piece of the omnibus bill ended up on the cutting room floor: billions in Covid-19 assistance funding.

For sure, there is much for the research world to celebrate: the bill still brings increases to the 2022 budgets of a number of acronyms that will be familiar to all those interested in research: the NIH, the CDC, the FDA and the NSF.