Uncontrolled Spread, Scott Gottlieb
Uncontrolled Spread, Scott Gottlieb
3 Rating(s)
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Uncontrolled Spread
Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic

Bestseller

Author: Scott Gottlieb

Narrator: Fred Sanders

Unabridged: 15 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 09/21/2021


Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“Uncontrolled Spread is everything you’d hope: a smart and insightful account of what happened and, currently, the best guide to what needs to be done to avoid a future pandemic."" —Wall Street Journal“Informative and well paced.”—The Guardian“An intense ride through the pandemic with chilling details of what really happened. It is also sprinkled with notes of true wisdom that may help all of us better prepare for the future.”—Sanjay Gupta, MD, chief medical correspondent, CNNPhysician and former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb asks: Has America’s COVID-19 catastrophe taught us anything?In Uncontrolled Spread, he shows how the coronavirus and its variants were able to trounce America’s pandemic preparations, and he outlines the steps that must be taken to protect against the next outbreak. As the pandemic unfolded, Gottlieb was in regular contact with all the key players in Congress, the Trump administration, and the drug and diagnostic industries. He provides an inside account of how level after level of American government crumbled as the COVID-19 crisis advanced.A system-wide failure across government institutions left the nation blind to the threat, and unable to mount an effective response. We’d prepared for the wrong virus. We failed to identify the contagion early enough and became overly reliant on costly and sometimes divisive tactics that couldn’t fully slow the spread. We never considered asymptomatic transmission and we assumed people would follow public health guidance. Key bureaucracies like the CDC were hidebound and outmatched. Weak political leadership aggravated these woes. We didn’t view a public health disaster as a threat to our national security.Many of the woes sprung from the CDC, which has very little real-time reporting capability to inform us of Covid’s twists and turns or assess our defenses. The agency lacked an operational capacity and mindset to mobilize the kind of national response that was needed. To guard against future pandemic risks, we must remake the CDC and properly equip it to better confront crises. We must also get our intelligence services more engaged in the global public health mission, to gather information and uncover emerging risks before they hit our shores so we can head them off. For this role, our clandestine agencies have tools and capabilities that the CDC lacks.Uncontrolled Spread argues we must fix our systems and prepare for a deadlier coronavirus variant, a flu pandemic, or whatever else nature -- or those wishing us harm -- may threaten us with. Gottlieb outlines policies and investments that are essential to prepare the United States and the world for future threats.

About Scott Gottlieb

Dr. Scott Gottlieb served as the twenty-third commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration and is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a regular contributor to the business news channel CNBC and a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. Dr. Gottlieb serves on the board of directors of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. and the genomic sequencing company Illumina, Inc. Fortune magazine has recognized him as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” and Time magazine has named him one of its “50 People Transforming Healthcare.” A graduate of Wesleyan University and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Gottlieb is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He lives with his family in Westport, Connecticut.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ryan on September 24, 2021

This is the best book about COVID-19 and the response to it. It's also one of the best post-mortems of a public policy fiasco I've ever read -- on par with Richard Feynman's post-mortem of the Challenger shuttle disaster. There's a common element -- the author in each was a highly intelligent expert......more

Goodreads review by Emily on July 09, 2021

In a world struggling to get back to normal after a devastating pandemic, especially when false information and theories are rampant, this book piqued my interest when it appeared on Net Galley. Former commissioner Gottlieb is someone I’ve trusted for information for years, and he doesn’t disappoint......more

Goodreads review by David on October 10, 2021

I disagree with several of Gottlieb's policy guidances, and I think he has some blind spots. Him reserving all his ire for the CDC and almost none for the agency he used to run (FDA) is a bit revealing. But in general this is a readable survey of the pandemic and the many U.S. missteps. It's also ge......more

Goodreads review by Steve on June 25, 2021

I enjoyed this book. Dr. Scott Gottleib gives a clear explanation of what happened to detour an adequate US response to the COVID pandemic. Gottleib covers the bases in this in-depth analysis but at times, especially when discussing testing, I felt that the analysis was too detailed. The book also p......more

Goodreads review by Mackenzie on October 28, 2021

If you were, like many of the book's presumed audience, working from home and hyper-online during the 2020 pandemic, you can skip this. While it's straightforward and interesting, it could use a solid edit (and less self-congratulatory prose on being apolitical, and, therefore, "objective"). If you'......more