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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2021
I knew the pandemic was on its way to the United States in January 2020, apparently before the White House did, when clients in China described the horrific situation there, forwarding illicit videos via WeChat. My mainland associates endured about two months of misery, and then the worst was behind them. I was hoping that the United States, with its focus on scientific research and topnotch (if unequally distributed) health care would have figured out effective ways to push back against the virus.
It was not to be.
I started looking around for sources of information that I could trust, and Andy Slavitt cut through the noise with his clear and cogent assessments. I started following him on Twitter and listening to his In the Bubble podcasts. I even bought a few of the Livinguard ("one g") masks for my collection. I ordered this book nine months ago, and finished it on the day that the Supreme Court reaffirmed the legality of the ACA.
The book itself, excluding notes and exhibits, is about 250 pages, a fast read. The focus is on the current pandemic as it unfolded in 2020, describing the collapse of the systems designed to support the United States during such a crisis, systems that had been undermined and underfunded -- for political reasons -- over the prior ten years. The book also illuminates some of the major flaws in our not-exactly-public health care system. In The Folly of the Free Market Pandemic, he describes how pharmaceutical companies ignore impending disasters like antibiotic-resistant bacteria because it's simply not profitable to produce new products, how the richest hospitals can rake in a small windfall by lending money to state governments, and of course how insurance companies are enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. It's all about profits, and we, the taxpayers, health care providers, and patients, are collateral damage. "Whether you believe capitalism has some role to play in health care or not, during the pandemic the system only served its masters."
Most of the blame, however, falls to the former guy and the echo chamber he assembled to advise him. Thanks to that administration's self-serving negligence and desire to avoid accountability, hundreds of thousands of Americans lost an average of ten years of their lives, and many millions more suffer long-term morbidities. Perhaps even worse, a substantial percentage of Americans were inculcated with anti-science, pro "freedom" propaganda that has prevented them from listening to experts, wearing masks, or getting life-saving vaccines.
The book ends in December 2020, with a brief Afterward where Andy explains why he agreed to help the new administration mount a federal response to the pandemic. Although he doesn't discuss it in any detail, his leadership was key to getting the vaccines distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans in record time. That story, I'm hoping, will be the topic of the next book.
It was not to be.
I started looking around for sources of information that I could trust, and Andy Slavitt cut through the noise with his clear and cogent assessments. I started following him on Twitter and listening to his In the Bubble podcasts. I even bought a few of the Livinguard ("one g") masks for my collection. I ordered this book nine months ago, and finished it on the day that the Supreme Court reaffirmed the legality of the ACA.
The book itself, excluding notes and exhibits, is about 250 pages, a fast read. The focus is on the current pandemic as it unfolded in 2020, describing the collapse of the systems designed to support the United States during such a crisis, systems that had been undermined and underfunded -- for political reasons -- over the prior ten years. The book also illuminates some of the major flaws in our not-exactly-public health care system. In The Folly of the Free Market Pandemic, he describes how pharmaceutical companies ignore impending disasters like antibiotic-resistant bacteria because it's simply not profitable to produce new products, how the richest hospitals can rake in a small windfall by lending money to state governments, and of course how insurance companies are enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. It's all about profits, and we, the taxpayers, health care providers, and patients, are collateral damage. "Whether you believe capitalism has some role to play in health care or not, during the pandemic the system only served its masters."
Most of the blame, however, falls to the former guy and the echo chamber he assembled to advise him. Thanks to that administration's self-serving negligence and desire to avoid accountability, hundreds of thousands of Americans lost an average of ten years of their lives, and many millions more suffer long-term morbidities. Perhaps even worse, a substantial percentage of Americans were inculcated with anti-science, pro "freedom" propaganda that has prevented them from listening to experts, wearing masks, or getting life-saving vaccines.
The book ends in December 2020, with a brief Afterward where Andy explains why he agreed to help the new administration mount a federal response to the pandemic. Although he doesn't discuss it in any detail, his leadership was key to getting the vaccines distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans in record time. That story, I'm hoping, will be the topic of the next book.
