'We can't let this happen again,' bill to form agency proposed to stop next pandemic

SAN ANTONIO - After the most catastrophic year and a half, lawmakers and doctors are already thinking about how to prevent a pandemic and setting forth a plan.

State Senator Jose Menendez worked with Dr. Larry Schlesinger, President and CEO of Texas Biomedical Research Institute, to propose Senate Bill 264.

The bill proposes creating the Texas Research Consortium to Cure Infectious Diseases, TRANSCEND for short, a new state agency to research infectious diseases and help create vaccines before thousands lose their lives.

"I know this is not the last pandemic," Dr. Schlesinger said via a Zoom interview.

As Texans and the rest of the country recover from COVID-19 Dr. Larry Schlesinger, an expert in infectious diseases, says crises are increasing globally.

“We know there are at least 15 to 20 circulating unknown viruses each year," Dr. Schlesinger said.

The doctor says TRANSCEND is a practical and achievable program that would fundamentally change us from reacting to the next crisis to being much better prepared.

It has two main goals:

1. Bringing together the private and public sector
2. Developing a platform where government officials, academic enterprises, and private and non-private institutes can work together planning, innovating, working on preventing and averting the next pandemic

We asked Dr. Schlesinger ‘Do you really believe that we need in a program like this after the year we just went through after vaccines were created in a record amount of time, how beneficial would TRANSCEND be in the future?’

“We knew right from the start that this was a Coronavirus, we may not be so lucky next time,” Dr. Schlesinger. “Knowing it was a Coronavirus allowed us within a week or so to sequence that virus we already knew what the potential targets for vaccine development were immediately, and then based on, really, a decade or more of research had platforms ready to attack those targets.”

The doctor points out the first outbreak due to Coronavirus was in 2003 a time when people were getting sick and the migration of the illness traveled globally but didn’t know what it was.

While COVID-19 was a demonstration of speed it was a military-based operation it was also not handled any different than the last pandemic.

“Masks and physical distancing and all the things we've done in 2020 and 21 were active in 1918 with the influenza pandemic. We can do better,” Dr. Schlesinger said.

TRANSCEND, promises to be the first of its kind in the country, a way to change the landscape of the future.

“We've had way too many deaths in this country, way too many deaths, and we can't let this happen again,” Dr. Schlesinger said.

Lives Senator Menendez says can be saved in the future if Texas becomes an investor of its own pandemic response facility and funds a lab -- here in San Antonio -- the first of its kind in the country.

"What would we give up individually, what would we be willing to pay, not to have lost the 600,000 American lives that we've lost,” Senator Menendez said.

TRANSCEND would cost you -- the taxpayer -- $3 billion.

“The bigger the price the bigger savings is not having that loss of life, and not having the loss of productivity, and not having the loss of so many people's life savings, how many restaurants have gone out of business, how many businesses, small businesses have gone out of business, more importantly, they lost loved ones unnecessarily,” Menendez said.

Putting it into perspective about $300 million per year for the next 12 years, they envision the agency to operate.

That’s a little more than the amount Governor Abbott is using as a down payment to finish building the border wall.

"I don't mean to politicize this but if you can find $250 million to build a wall, just to keep people out you can find $300 million to save lives, to keep our economy going to keep people's businesses going, keep our kids in school, I think it's definitely worth it,” Senator Menendez said.

Q - “Some people say that this is a very hard time for Texas to be setting aside $300 million of taxpayer money to create a new program like TRANSCEND, especially after the year, we just went through, what do you tell them?”

A - “I say that we, the state of Texas, have something called the Economic Stabilization Fund which many people refer to it colloquially as a rainy day fund. It has billions of dollars, billions of dollars in there, all of which belong to the state of Texas, so we don't necessarily even have to say, let's go take money we can borrow against the rainy day fund. We're gonna get more creative with how we fund this it doesn't have to be $300 million out of the general revenue fund. We just need a large investment,” Menendez said.

Q - “How will you know that this money is being put to good use and how will you tell the taxpayers, their money is being put to good use?”

A - “We'd be creating a new agency, and it would be owned by an agency of the state, and it would be one that would have to file reports that would have a board of directors that would be appointed by the governor and the legislature,” Menendez said. “It would be a center for innovation when it comes to pandemic relief when it comes to any type of new disease so that we could short circuit this process, and we wouldn't necessarily be at the, at the mercy of whether it's a privately held company pharmaceutical that designs it or develops the cure, or at the federal government, the taxes would be the parent and the owner of the research.”

Something Dr. Schlesinger also mentioned.

“Everything's peer-reviewed, it's done on the table by experts in the field to ensure that there's fairness, transparency, there are reports that we provide on a frequent basis to the public, to let them know about our victories and to reassure them about how this program is being administered,” Dr. Schlesinger said.

Senator Menendez says this investment is a no-brainer -- we already have the Texas Biomedical Research Institute a level four lab, necessary for this to happen.

“Texas BioMed, did all the preclinical work with Pfizer by Entech on the Pfizer vaccine that's going in your arm today,” Dr. Schlesinger said.

Both the doctor and the senator say TRANSCEND can be a ‘game changer’ for San Antonio.

“Think about the number of high paying jobs it would bring, the level of talent it would bring, not just to San Antonio, but the whole state of Texas,” Senator Menendez said.

However, the legislative session is now over, and just like many other bills that did not go through both chambers - SB 264 is dead.

But the senator says a special session will be held where he plans to pitch it again to the governor.

If not, they'd have to wait until the next regular session in 2023.

“All I can do is focus on the solution, and focus on presenting what I know is going to be something that's going to help not just San Antonio for the state of Texas, but the whole nation, and probably even the whole world,” Senator Menendez said.