How America Bungled the COVID Pandemic

Nina Burleigh, author of the new book Virus: Vaccination, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America’s Response to the Pandemic, observed that underfunding and politicization at the Centers for Disease Control hindered its ability to get accurate information to Americans. Burleigh says, “They [Trump Administration] started to politicize and mess with the data, which was really outrageous. But I don’t think that the CDC was in full rot mode before that.” She pointed to the vast asymmetry of spending on defense versus health which has characterized American priorities for decades as key to why we did poorly last year.