Matthew Hepburn, a retired Army colonel, was standing in the vast parking lot outside the Pentagon when he got the call from Peter Marks to take over his role so that Marks could return to the FDA. Humphrey building, the brutalist concrete building on Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C., had begun with Army personnel marching on the dingy brown carpets of the health department in their combat boots. Within weeks, the military invasion of the Hubert H. Having spent the past 18 months researching the history of Operation Warp Speed, I feel more convinced than ever that the military should continue to play a public role in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, not only within our own borders but around the world.
The military’s role in the effort went from being front and center to being a background player, its contributions lost amid the politics of an overheated election season. On daily video calls with David Kessler, the pediatrician that Biden installed to oversee what remained of the effort, it was awkwardly referred to as “the operation” and was just another piece of the federal COVID-19 response. With the efficiency that one would expect from the program that had delivered three coronavirus vaccines to the country in record time, the Operation Warp Speed signs were all stripped from the walls of headquarters of the Department of Health and Human Services and placed inside a locked room.Īnd, by the way, the operation would also no longer be called Warp Speed. On the day after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, a new set of orders came down the chain of command to the Operation Warp Speed team working under Gen. Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to reflect the correct rank and title for Matt Clark and Matthew Hepburn.