Thread by @ASlavitt

COVID Update September 8: Ive been trying to write on Twitter an amalgamation of what I hear every day from scientists, the White House, governors & every day people.

Now I want to write those actual conversations & stories. 1/

amazon.com/Preventable-Le…

Why? Because as the title says so much of the loss we’ve experienced was preventable.

And the on the ground view that I’ve seen tells me that we have to wrestle with some tough questions. 2/

Most experts I’ve talked to estimate that 75% of our the lives we lost could have been saved if we had done a better job at this.

These bugs are a part of life and we need to understand how to do this.3/

There’s not just one reason the situation we’re in was preventable.

If we want to prevent the next potentially worse ones we should understand as many of the reasons as we can.

And have some real conversations. 4/

Not containing the epidemic at the outset (both by China & by us w no working tests) feels like the first missed opportunity. We count on scientists & political leaders to do that.

But what if they can’t? Or don’t? Then what? Are we just destined to be overwhelmed? 5/

There are deeper issues:
-a health care system filled with amazing people run by greedy ones
-a country where too many will no longer walk in others’ shoes
-a country where the burdens fall on the same people over & over
-money buys indifference if you want it 6/

-we are out of practice at sacrifice
-we have an obsession with our rights but not the price of our freedom
-we have diminished our experts & science in general
-we have neglected public health because it’s not a problem until it’s our problem
-our Congress doesn’t answer to us7/

-we didn’t learn lessons quickly in one region and apply them to another

Of course our federal government wouldn’t take this seriously, accept the situation we were in, or level with us. But—- 8/

All but the last are underlying conditions before you even consider who is president. For a president to overcome them, he or she needs to simply bring compassion & competency and a willingness to solve problems.

We don’t have that. But I wanted to go deeper in this book.9

In other words, writing a takedown of Trump wouldn’t be hard to do on this topic, but it’s also not enough.

10

I don’t worry about getting out of this. Sadly we will get out at too high a price.

But I worry that this is may be our starter bug. What if the next one spreads like measles & is as lethal as Ebola?11/

We have to be able to count on our government. And it would be nice to be able to count on one another. 12/

That’s why I wrote the book. And for it I talked to so many who were kind enough to share their stories so this could be told first-hand. 13/

Daily conversations with scientists government officials risk managers FDA WHO CDC Congress Governors doctors nurses patients families as they we’re going through this helped me write this.

Makes it feel a bit like The Big Short except he’s Michael Lewis and I’m not.

It was announced today. It’s already the 999,999,999th most popular book. So there’s that. So I’m pretty sure you can pre-order.

More importantly than the book, we can prevent this from happening next time. /end