Overview
We thought we were a nation ready for any crisis. Covid showed us how much we have yet to learn. America's response to Covid cost too many lives, set our children back in their education, and forever damaged our trust in our government's ability to protect and guide us through crises. Conflicting values and strategies received too little ethical consideration as we blindly followed an overly simplified prime directive to stop infections and save lives. In What Went Wrong, award-winning bioethicist Gregory Pence reveals how the best of intentions resulted in disastrous consequences for our nation. As many as 400,000 non-Covid deaths occurred as a by-product of poor planning and implementation of medical policies. We continue to realize the long-term effects on our nation, including millions of children now being years behind in reading and math. Proportionally, America suffered more deaths during the pandemic than any other developed country. So where do we go from here? Hindsight on the pandemic shows us how important and complex the ethical implications of public health policy are. Unless we learn from America's failures, the next pandemic could be even worse.
Full Product Details
Author: Gregory E. Pence
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield
Weight: 0.413kg
ISBN: 9781538199701
ISBN 10: 153819970
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 15 April 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Not yet available
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Reviews
What Went Wrong covers the most controversial aspects of the US handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's clear from reading the book that one of the biggest failures in the US response to COVID-19 was a failure of leadership, from our scientific and public health institutions to the White House. Greg provides an astute and painful reminder of what went wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is a vital and necessary exercise to prevent it from happening again. Unless we learn from our past, we are destined to repeat it. --Francis Sweeney, MD, Straight Talk MD Podcast What Went Wrong takes a long, hard look at how the pandemic was handled in America. As Covid is unlikely to be the last pandemic, this book is a necessary stimulus to think hard about how we can do better next time. --Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Emeritus, Princeton University An essential text on the US Covid pandemic response. As a long-standing bioethicist, Pence has a clear-eyed view of how the excessively political Covid response in the US contributed to poorer outcomes in the country. Pence discusses harm reduction as a strategy to manage pandemics, the loss of trust in public health in the US, and ways--via an honest appraisal and hard look at our response--to regain that trust. This is a well-referenced and brilliant examination with a profoundly hopeful viewpoint that ethics will win out in future pandemics. --Monica Gandhi, director, UCSF-Bay Area Center for AIDS Research
What Went Wrong takes a long, hard look at how the pandemic was handled in America. As Covid is unlikely to be the last pandemic, this book is a necessary stimulus to think hard about how we can do better next time. -- Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Emeritus, Princeton University An essential text on the US Covid pandemic response. As a long-standing bioethicist, Pence has a clear-eyed view of how the excessively political Covid response in the US contributed to poorer outcomes in the country. Pence discusses harm reduction as a strategy to manage pandemics, the loss of trust in public health in the US, and ways—via an honest appraisal and hard look at our response—to regain that trust. This is a well-referenced and brilliant examination with a profoundly hopeful viewpoint that ethics will win out in future pandemics. -- Monica Gandhi, director, UCSF-Bay Area Center for AIDS Research What Went Wrong covers the most controversial aspects of the US handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s clear from reading the book that one of the biggest failures in the US response to COVID-19 was a failure of leadership, from our scientific and public health institutions to the White House. Greg provides an astute and painful reminder of what went wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is a vital and necessary exercise to prevent it from happening again. Unless we learn from our past, we are destined to repeat it. -- Francis Sweeney, MD, Straight Talk MD Podcast
A wonderfully clear, even-handed, and insightful analysis of all the things that went wrong (and the few that went right) in handling the Covid pandemic. --Nicholas Wade, science writer, The New York Times What Went Wrong covers the most controversial aspects of the US handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's clear from reading the book that one of the biggest failures in the US response to COVID-19 was a failure of leadership, from our scientific and public health institutions to the White House. Greg provides an astute and painful reminder of what went wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is a vital and necessary exercise to prevent it from happening again. Unless we learn from our past, we are destined to repeat it. --Francis Sweeney, MD, Straight Talk MD Podcast What Went Wrong takes a long, hard look at how the pandemic was handled in America. As Covid is unlikely to be the last pandemic, this book is a necessary stimulus to think hard about how we can do better next time. --Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Emeritus, Princeton University An essential text on the US Covid pandemic response. As a long-standing bioethicist, Pence has a clear-eyed view of how the excessively political Covid response in the US contributed to poorer outcomes in the country. Pence discusses harm reduction as a strategy to manage pandemics, the loss of trust in public health in the US, and ways--via an honest appraisal and hard look at our response--to regain that trust. This is a well-referenced and brilliant examination with a profoundly hopeful viewpoint that ethics will win out in future pandemics. --Monica Gandhi, director, UCSF-Bay Area Center for AIDS Research
Author Information
Gregory Pence is an award-winning bioethicist with nearly 50 years' of experience in the field, teaching at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center. His books include Pandemic Bioethics, Brave New Bioethics, How to Build a Better Human: An Ethical Blueprint, and Overcoming Addiction: Seven Imperfect Solutions and the End of America's Greatest Epidemic. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
