Summary of The Big Fail by Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean E-Book

SUMMARY GP

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of The Big Fail by Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

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The Big Fail is a comprehensive analysis of American capitalism and the leaders responsible for the failure to protect its citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors, Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, investigate the reasons behind America's rise to the world leader in COVID deaths, focusing on the impact of supply chain issues, polarized approaches, and the role of private equity firms in maximizing shareholder value. The book is essential reading for understanding the future of American capitalism.

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GP SUMMARY

Summary of The Big Fail by Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean

What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

The Big Fail is a detailed analysis of American capitalism's failure to protect citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting supply chain issues, polarized approaches, and private equity firms' role in shareholder value.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

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Summary of The Big Fail

A

Summary of

Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean’s Book

What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

GP SUMMARY

Summary of The Big Fail by Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

By GP SUMMARY© 2023, GP SUMMARY.

All rights reserved.

Author: GP SUMMARY

Contact: [email protected]

Cover, illustration: GP SUMMARY

Editing, proofreading: GP SUMMARY

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NOTE TO READERS

This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean’s “The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind” designed to enrich your reading experience.

DISCLAIMER

The contents of the summary are not intended to replace the original book. It is meant as a supplement to enhance the reader's understanding. The contents within can neither be stored electronically, transferred, nor kept in a database. Neither part nor full can the document be copied, scanned, faxed, or retained without the approval from the publisher or creator.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

In February 2023, Bret Stephens of The New York Times published a column about the efficacy of masking during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, conducted by the Cochrane Library, found that there was "little or no" evidence that masking reduced the incidence of COVID-19 in a population. The public health establishment dismissed the study, focusing on respiratory viruses other than COVID-19. The CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, questioned the reliance on studies done for other respiratory viruses and continued to recommend masks in high-risk communities. Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci followed Stephens's column with a similar argument, stating that the review is not able to address the question of whether mask wearing itself reduces people's risk of contracting or spreading respiratory viruses.

Personal attacks were also directed at Jefferson, while Stephens was lambasted. The mask controversy was a microcosm of the pandemic itself, as masks were a symbol of one's politics during the pandemic. Opinion and bias trumped fact-finding and scientific inquiry, and those who dissented from the liberal mainstream were silenced and castigated for their supposed personal failings.

The debate over masks during the pandemic highlights the need for a deeper understanding of the virus's origins, its effects, and its treatment. Despite the resources available, America did not fare well during the pandemic, with an excess death rate of 1.3 million deaths. The book argues that America could not have done better, and pretending differently is a dangerous fiction. The pandemic revealed deep-seated issues, such as preexisting illnesses and the inability of politicians to fix them. The book also highlights the intensified divides and the unpreparedness of the economy for crises like the pandemic, as well as the encroaching mores of capitalism on society's morals.

The book also shares the success story of Operation Warp Speed, which teaches lessons about leadership, setting aside personal politics for the greater good, and cooperation between business and government. The core of the story is the failure of government to set the right rules for managing a pandemic or establishing the boundaries of capitalism. The book hopes to inspire a necessary look in the mirror and learn from the horror of the pandemic.

PART I

CONTAGION

The Scapegoat

The first sighting of COVID-19 in the United States occurred on January 19, 2020, when a man in his thirties returned from Wuhan, China, with a mild cough and pneumonia-like symptoms. The CDC had sequenced the novel coronavirus, which was not yet known. At this early stage of the pandemic, it was almost impossible to get tested for COVID-19. The illness didn't even have a name, so it wasn't clear if the disease was being transmitted more broadly. Washington State had to wait until the CDC had manufactured its test and developed its own test.

The lack of urgency in testing was due to the fact that most pathogens in recent years had largely bypassed the United States. Wuhan was sealed off, and Western scientists didn't know how contagious it was or how it spread. The pandemic's true fury wouldn't be felt outside China until it hit Italy in mid-February.

The first inkling of the Wuhan outbreak came not from China but from Taiwan's economic and cultural office in the United States. A document began circulating on the internet about an urgent notice issued by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission citing a "pneumonia of unknown cause" and noting that patients had come from the seafood market. It took another three days for a Chinese health official to contact Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, and Dr. George Fu Gao, his Chinese counterpart, who informed Redfield about the existence of the virus.

With a presidential election less than a year away, this was not welcome news at the White House. However, when China shared the initial data on the first twenty-seven human cases, not all could be traced back to the market, and some were clustered within families.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a complex and contentious event, with differing opinions on the severity of the virus. Wuhan Hospital's chief of respiratory medicine expressed concerns about human-to-human transmission, but no information was shared with researchers from the WHO. The Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, led by Zhang Yongzhen, claimed that the virus should be contagious through respiratory passages. However, preliminary investigations conducted by Chinese authorities found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.

The situation was exacerbated by the president's unwillingness to choose a path, as well as the atomization of teamwork due to loyalties and feuds developed during Trump's three years in office. The White House Coronavirus Task Force was formed on January 29, and Trump named Azar to lead it. Azar signed an order declaring a public health emergency, but the task force was focused on extracting Americans stuck in Hubei Province.

Key people were left off the task force, and there was no coordination. The task force was obsessed with trying to extract the Americans stuck in Hubei Province, which distracted the entire interagency process of the US government. The Chinese and WHO both privately criticized the US for its efforts to evacuate people, leading to the release of masks and other PPE to placate the Chinese.

The WHO declared COVID-19 a "public-health emergency of international concern" on January 30, but was not ready to call it a pandemic. The agency was not ready to use the term "pandemic," fearing that people would freak out if it was used. The struggle between those who wanted to do everything and those who wanted to do nothing was exacerbated by the Trump administration's lack of coordination and understanding of the situation.

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic was characterized by a schizophrenic and scattered nature. While public health scientists had long known that travel bans were ineffective, the husband of a Chicago woman who had been infected in China also contracted the virus, confirming human-to-human transmission. Trump immediately agreed to a travel ban, allowing him to appear to be taking action. However, it was already too late as at least 430,000 people had arrived in the United States on direct flights from China since New Year's Eve.

The Moleskys, a retired teacher and couple, flew to Japan to board the Diamond Princess cruise ship. They were among the 380 or so Americans on the ship with 2,664 other guests and 1,045 crew from fifty-six countries. On February 5, there were ten positives, causing the ship's captain to announce that all guests would have to stay in their rooms for at least the next fourteen days. This was the first time China's approach, a forced quarantine, soon to be labeled a "lockdown," had been used outside China.

Every day, the infections multiplied, and the Diamond Princess soon became the largest COVID-19 cluster outside Wuhan. The U.S. embassy in Japan emailed the Americans on the ship, stating that those who didn't have the virus could go home. However, only after everyone was ready to board the flight was it discovered that fourteen of them had tested positive. No one had told the uninfected passengers what was happening. Hours into the flight, the Moleskys realized that there was a slit in the plastic separating a section of the plane, and when passengers registered a fever or began to exhibit symptoms, they were moved behind the plastic. After landing, they had to spend fifteen days in quarantine at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas before returning home.

The Diamond Princess incident, a tragic example of the COVID-19 pandemic, was a stark reminder of the need for strategic community testing. Despite the vulnerability of passengers and crew, major cruise lines were allowed to continue sailing, and Vice President Mike Pence even flew to Florida to discuss industry recommendations. It wasn't until March 14, after dozens of ships stuck off America's shoreline requested Coast Guard assistance, that the CDC issued a no-sail order.

The FDA approved the CDC's COVID-19 test on February 4, bypassing some of its normal bureaucratic protocols. By February 6, the CDC had sent test kits to thirty-three states and seventy labs in sixty-six countries. The test was complicated, with three components: reagents identifying genetic sequences unique to COVID-19 and a third component detecting any coronavirus, even those that had never infected humans. The CDC decided to manufacture its own test kits instead of sending them out to a third-party manufacturer, despite lacked manufacturing expertise.

Public health labs were sending frantic messages to the CDC that the tests didn't work, and there was no plan to have hospitals or academic labs make tests or engage testing companies. Bureaucratic roadblocks made it impossible for other labs to even try to make tests. While these rules exist to protect the public from faulty or fraudulent tests, they were counterproductive during the pandemic. Many people around the country had the expertise to do this, and the CDC's test would go first to public health labs.

The COVID-19 pandemic in January and February 2020 was a devastating blunder for the US, leaving the country dangerously blind to its spread. The lack of a widely available diagnostic test, which allowed for case-based interventions, led to the closure of the window for preventing the virus from gaining a foothold. The inability to test for COVID-19 in January and February 2020 was a devastating blunder, as it left the country dangerously blind to its spread. Without a widely available diagnostic test, the US missed the chance to use case-based interventions, such as diagnosing the sick, tracing their contacts, and placing people who have been exposed into quarantine.

In late February and early March, the evidence was inescapable: a pandemic was on the world's doorstep. Italy reported fifty-eight hundred cases and 233 deaths by early March, and the US urgent care clinics faced huge demands for testing from patients with respiratory virus symptoms who were testing negative for influenza. In the US, a high school student who had no record of travel, contact with anyone who had traveled, and no known contact with anyone else with the virus tested positive when he showed up at Everett Clinic in Washington State.

Shortages of the materials needed to conduct diagnostic tests, like swabs and reagents, disappeared, and other reagents that could do similar things were told they couldn't use them because they weren't in the Emergency Use Authorization approval from the FDA.

Washington State officials had requested additional protective gear from the Strategic National Stockpile, which was depleted during the H1N1 scare. The HHS officials told the state to ask for only one week's worth of equipment, and when state officials objected, they were told that the federal government wasn't prepared to provide the level of supplies they needed. Dr. Jeff Duchin, the staff epidemiologist for the Seattle public health department, sent an email stating a serious challenge related to hospital exposures and impact on healthcare system equipment.