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

by Scott Gottlieb

As for the political response, President Donald Trump and his advisers grew increasingly weary of the economic impact of the measures recommended by public health authorities, and they were wrongly convinced that uncontrolled spread was inevitable regardless of what steps were taken. This partly underpinned an ambivalence by the president on how forcefully to embrace mitigation. That doubt was reflected in public statements, and actions, that were contradictory and harmful. At the same time that the president was berating Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for opening tattoo parlors and bowling alleys too soon, he was tweeting dangerously to his followers to “Liberate Michigan.”21 At the same time that many of the president’s top health officials were urging people to wear masks at the start of the fall surge of infection, the president stood on the balcony of the South Portico of the White House and, in a theatrical gesture, took off his mask while he was still contagious with the virus.