This book highlights how ill prepared we and the world are to deal with a major disaster. Wright wanders of topic a bit when discussing the social unrest during 2020. ( )

How We Went So Wrong in 2020

If we can’t agree on much, certainly we can agree that 2020, the initial year of Covid, amounted to a torturous test of American medicine, public health, and government. None proved up to the Covid assault, but as Lawrence Wright illustrates and reminds us, our leaders, if you can use that word to describe the people in charge then, put politics before the well being of the American people. Chronicling the plague year can’t be done without discussing the politics of the time and all the very bad decisions resulting from an administration more concerned with the narcissism of the man who would be president.

Wright begins with the appearance of Covid in China and its authoritarian efforts to suppress information that would make them look bad. He recounts the faltering first efforts of the CDC regarding testing. He moves on to the delusional denial campaign of an administration that rejected its first duty, to protect the American people. Among the many individuals on the ground he intertwines in the narrative is Dr. Deborah Birx and the colossal task she faced dealing with an administration in active denial. He weaves in other events of year, reaching back to the Tulsa white riot to illustrate Trump’s complete tone deafness for history and the George Floyd murder to remind us how costly in lives lost to Covid has been the national refusal to acknowledge and rectify the racism inherent in American society.

Doubtless, it was a terrible year for the world and particularly for the U.S. But there was good, too, even heroics as public health officials fought to keep the ship afloat, doctors and nurses risked their lives to treat people, even the recalcitrant, as best they could while being overwhelmed by patients and shortages of vital supplies, until the arrival of effective, safe vaccines, developed on the findings of decades of research.

After you read this worthwhile effort to put a trying year in perspective you may find yourself reminded of Tolstoy’s rendition of Napoleon at the Battle of Borodino steeped in his plans at once irrelevant to delusional with regard to what was happening on the ground. That’s because it sounds all too familiar Americans who were on the battleground in 2020. ( )

How We Went So Wrong in 2020

If we can’t agree on much, certainly we can agree that 2020, the initial year of Covid, amounted to a torturous test of American medicine, public health, and government. None proved up to the Covid assault, but as Lawrence Wright illustrates and reminds us, our leaders, if you can use that word to describe the people in charge then, put politics before the well being of the American people. Chronicling the plague year can’t be done without discussing the politics of the time and all the very bad decisions resulting from an administration more concerned with the narcissism of the man who would be president.

Wright begins with the appearance of Covid in China and its authoritarian efforts to suppress information that would make them look bad. He recounts the faltering first efforts of the CDC regarding testing. He moves on to the delusional denial campaign of an administration that rejected its first duty, to protect the American people. Among the many individuals on the ground he intertwines in the narrative is Dr. Deborah Birx and the colossal task she faced dealing with an administration in active denial. He weaves in other events of year, reaching back to the Tulsa white riot to illustrate Trump’s complete tone deafness for history and the George Floyd murder to remind us how costly in lives lost to Covid has been the national refusal to acknowledge and rectify the racism inherent in American society.

Doubtless, it was a terrible year for the world and particularly for the U.S. But there was good, too, even heroics as public health officials fought to keep the ship afloat, doctors and nurses risked their lives to treat people, even the recalcitrant, as best they could while being overwhelmed by patients and shortages of vital supplies, until the arrival of effective, safe vaccines, developed on the findings of decades of research.

After you read this worthwhile effort to put a trying year in perspective you may find yourself reminded of Tolstoy’s rendition of Napoleon at the Battle of Borodino steeped in his plans at once irrelevant to delusional with regard to what was happening on the ground. That’s because it sounds all too familiar Americans who were on the battleground in 2020. ( )

A warts and all look at how the US handled toe Covid epidemic in 2020. No one leaves the pages of this book without some egg on his or her face. We could have done so much better. ( )

Having lived through, and still living through the COVID-19 pandemic, I didn't expect to need much of a refresher on the origin and the spread of the virus across the U.S. and other nations. But Lawrence Wright proved me wrong, and his book "The Plague Year" reminded me of things about COVID-19 which I'd forgotten, and taught me a few things I didn't know about the virus.

In this second year of the pandemic, as the rate of infections and deaths begin to ebb, Wright reminds us of the early unknowns associated with the disease, the fears we dealt with, the lack of needed medical equipment, the uncertainty of treatment methods, and the lack of hospital beds early on. One part which he mentions and bears repeating is the unselfish heroism of the first line medical teams dealing with the initial surge of patients. Often lacking protective equipment during the initial phase of the pandemic, medical personnel continued to treat patients to the best of their ability, stayed at their posts to the point of exhaustion. And unfortunately, several thousand health care workers lost their lives during the process.

Wright praises those who did well, like so many health care workers, but doesn't hold back in his criticism of those individuals, agencies, leaders, and Countries whose lapses allowed the virus to spread as much as it did. That would include the Chinese, the President, and individuals who refused to follow the medical guidance. So be prepared for some political / ideological commentary by the author as well. ( )