Nine months later, the urgent deliberations inside the N.C.A.A. offer a view into how Murthy approached the pandemic’s initial threat in the United States, and how he might help shape the federal government’s response under President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who said this week he had chosen Murthy for another stint as surgeon general.

A newcomer to the insular world of college athletics, Murthy proved a cautious, deliberate expert who was wary of making drastic decisions prematurely, interviews with more than a dozen people who participated in the N.C.A.A.’s meetings suggest. But they said that as the tournaments approached and more data and scientific research emerged from around the world, Murthy was a forceful and effective champion of measures that had been unthinkable to most of society only days or weeks earlier.

Now, his mandate is poised to be far larger. And in many respects, the surgeon general’s role is expected to be radically different than what it was when he left office in 2017. He is likely to become one of the most visible members of the new administration, opening his approach and his ideas to greater scrutiny from the public and from Capitol Hill, where his nomination during the Obama administration became mired in the politics of gun control before the Senate confirmed him in December 2014.

Through a spokesman for Biden’s transition team, Murthy declined to comment this week.

But in an interview on March 7, Murthy showed an early approach to the virus that sought to balance his growing worries with some bedrock principles of public health.

“It’s a judgment call at the end of the day because there is no tried and true protocol here for how to handle this kind of outbreak with Covid-19,” he said then. “We’re in a relatively new situation. We can draw on our experience with other outbreaks like SARS and MERS and H1N1 and Zika, but we know that each of these outbreaks is unique.”

Source: New York Times

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