Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic

by Scott Gottlieb

At the same time, the WHO continued to publicly praise China for its purported openness. To take one of many examples, at a January 30 press conference, Tedros celebrated “China’s commitment to transparency and to supporting other countries. . . . In many ways, China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response, and it’s not an exaggeration.”49 He would make similarly effusive statements on other occasions, despite the wrangling that continued behind the scenes. A year later, at a media event held a week before the end of President Trump’s term, Secretary Azar reflected on the opening days of the pandemic, saying that his team was “pressing for the Chinese government to send us viral isolates from patients there. And China has still, one year later, failed to provide the first-generation viral isolates.”50 Access to those samples at the outset could have helped the world prepare. And without the source strains, it would be impossible to determine with any certainty the virus’s origin, and whether the market was the focal point of the initial outbreak or, as seems more likely, one stop along its advance.