OPINION:
“Lessons From the Covid War: An Investigative Report by The Covid Crisis Group” sizes up the U.S. response to the largest worldwide conflict so far in the 21st century.
The Covid Crisis Group consists of dozens of specialists in a variety of medical, public health, educational, scientific and economic fields. The organization began functioning as the Covid Commission Planning Group in February 2021 and held nearly 200 listening sessions.
“These sessions encompassed a broad spectrum of experts on the Covid crisis, including physicians, scientists, survivors and advocacy groups, public health experts, economists, academics, business executives, federal, state, and local government officials, congressional leaders and staff, and many others.”
Based on what was heard and reflecting on the crisis overall, the authors “want to get past the enormous jumble of information and make some sense of it all.” They want to explore “What just happened to us, and why? [And how] could we do better?”
The book opens with a lament that the U.S. government has not yet created or facilitated an official commission to study this century’s biggest global crisis that may repeat itself but in a more aggressive fashion.
With copious documentation and in largely nonpartisan fashion, “Lessons From the Covid War” delivers an in-depth, methodical accounting of the Trump and later Biden administration evaluations and approaches to mitigate and defeat the pernicious, intractable virus.
The book covers practically all aspects of the life-and-death struggle during the pandemic. Much detail is provided on early efforts to understand the contagion. Particular attention is given to Operation Warp Speed with a behind-the-scenes history and analysis of its development, deployment and effectiveness.
Regarding the origin of COVID-19, several pages are dedicated to reviewing the emergence of the virus, either from “spillover” from human transport of infected wild animals to Wuhan, China, or from a “lab leak.” The book concludes that there is not yet enough evidence to make a definitive conclusion either way (although this reviewer considers the lab-leak hypothesis much more plausible, as I have maintained in my previous Times commentaries and book reviews).
Many frontline innovators and health care providers are identified and praised for stepping up to save lives and fill in the many gaps that resulted from initial confusing prevention and treatment instructions and ineffective measures to slow the invasion of the invisible, deadly enemy. Details of successful yeoman efforts are given in various sections of the book, such as the chapter “Communities Improvise with Few Tools.”
Policies and procedures that were more efficacious in countries such as South Korea, Germany and Japan are described. These countries acted quickly and decisively, taking appropriate measures to effect good public health responses. By comparison, the U.S., with many resources and technical know-how, made too many missteps that are depicted throughout “Lessons From the Covid War.”
However, not only are the COVID-19 challenges noted, but recommendations are also proffered for more efficient and effective actions to counter a future and potentially more deadly viral attack. So early on, the book observes that in any war, intelligence is vital and advises:
“The primary task of any security system is to prevent or warn of an impending attack. The better methods for doing this formulate scenarios for how the greatest dangers might arise. Then they analyze how such developments might be detected. They put in place the means to do that detecting and validate how well that works in the real world. Then they figure out what to do when the alarm bells start ringing.”
An example of a strategic lesson learned is that to contain “an outbreak before it becomes a pandemic requires more ambitious and realistic national and international preparation [including] setups for biomedical surveillance that draw on our successful public-private experiments in this crisis, connecting the public health and healthcare systems.”
Ultimately, “Lessons From the Covid War” concludes that only national executive leadership “can orchestrate real strategies to contain an outbreak and design, produce, distribute, and deploy the toolkits of countermeasures to help communities defend themselves.”
Hopefully, national leadership will be up to the task next time. Certainly, “Lessons From the Covid War” and an impartial national COVID-19 commission can help prepare an effective, timely defense.
• Anthony J. Sadar is an adjunct associate professor at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, and co-author of “Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry” (CRC Press, 2021).
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Lessons From the Covid War: An Investigative Report
The Covid Crisis Group
PublicAffairs, April 25, 2023, 352 pages, $18.99
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