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

by Scott Gottlieb

White House aides should never have let the president be put at risk of contracting COVID. In an Oval Office meeting the previous Monday, the president had complained privately to senior aides about an event that had been held inside the White House on Sunday, where guests attending a ceremonial gathering had gotten close to the president. After Trump was diagnosed with COVID, there was a refrain in the media that his infection was the consequence of his own cavalier approach to the virus, a narrative that was overly simplistic. Though the president appeared, on many occasions, to outwardly minimize the threat that COVID posed—downplaying its severity, eschewing the use of masks, giving short shrift to other precautions—inwardly he was cognizant of his own personal risk, and privately he was being reassured that the precautions adopted by the White House would keep him safe.