America’s Epic COVID-19 Fail: A Selection from Nicholas A. Christakis’s Apollo’s Arrow (2020)

“Early on, many authorities, including the CDC and the surgeon general, recommended against universal mask adoption because the United States had such limited supplies of personal protective equipment. It was feared that recommending universal mask-wearing would deprive health-care workers of precious supplies. The World Health Organization also discouraged masks as late as April 2020. If conserving masks for health-care workers was the true policy motivation, it made no sense to mislead the public, who were understandably confused by the mixed messages in the statement: ‘This mask is so valuable, it has to be given to a health-care provider, but in any case it would not help you and you do not need it.’ Needed credibility was lost over this shifting story. . . .

Many other countries around the world had started testing for the virus by early 2020, but the United States had not. We made three types of mistakes. First, and most important, the CDC released a test kit that was flawed, and when the error was detected, the response was unnecessarily slow. Second, the FDA refused to allow hospital labs to develop their own tests, even though most elite hospitals in the United States could do this and were eager to do so. Third, the Department of Health and Human Services took its time to work with outside labs to increase the availability of commercial tests, for which there was a huge market, and did not get it done until it was too late. These mistakes were identified in real time by many experts from across the political spectrum, and I read about them with rising alarm during the months of February and March. It’s hard to overstate the Keystone Cops flavor to this stage of the country’s pandemic response. People outside the United States watched with incredulity and dismay as the world’s richest nation, with its illustrious CDC (which has provided the model for disease-control centers across the globe) and the most sophisticated medical care, failed to provide this most basic public health intervention. . . . The lack of coordination at the federal level, prompted in part by the undue politicization of the pandemic, severely hampered the United States. . . . if the country were a student in one of my courses, I would not hesitate to hand it an F.”—Nicholas A. Christakis, Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of the Coronavirus on the Way We Live (2020)