The Wisdom of Plagues

Not just another COVID 19 book; former New York Times science editor McNeil pulls back and discusses how the world has almost always botched its response to pandemics. He links these failures to a combination of factors: response time, denialism, bigotry, corruption, media coverage, political opportunism and profiteering. The book is non-partisan for the most part; McNeil assigns blame to both Trump and Biden for lives that were unnecessarily lost to COVID-19.

The book's first half is the most interesting; in the second half McNeil proposes solutions that have less than a snowball's chance in hell of being adopted. It's difficult not to insert himself into the narrative because McNeil reported from the front lines of many pandemics, including several that devastated other countries but left the US relatively unscathed. But he does have a superior “I alone know the answers” tone that becomes more grating in the how-to-fix-things chapters. Another pandemic in our lifetimes is likely; I am not optimistic we will react more productively than we did in 2020.