Planning for the Wrong Pandemic

The fractious and disorganized governmental response to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States prompted many observers to ask why the country ‒ which had the knowledge, resources, and plans to deal with such an event ‒ was caught so unprepared when the crisis struck.

In fact, as Andrew Lakoff shows, US officials had been planning for a pandemic for more than two decades, and many of these plans were implemented in the early stages of the pandemic. As authorities responded to the crisis, they relied on an already formulated set of concepts and tools that had been devised for managing a future emergency. These preexisting tools enabled officials to make sense of the event and to rapidly implement policies in response, but they also led to significant blind spots.

What did these planning tools allow officials to see, and what did they hide from view? And, as we assess the failures in our response to the pandemic and attempt to prepare for “the next one,” to what extent should we take for granted the capacity of these tools to guide future interventions effectively? Introduction

Chapter 1: Preparedness Indicators
Chapter 2: Essential Workers
Chapter 3: The Strategic National Stockpile
Chapter 4: The Scenario-Based Exercise
Chapter 5: Emergency Use
Chapter 6: Gain-of-Function

Epilogue

“There is simply no better scholar than Andrew Lakoff ‒ who has written so astutely on the history of preparing for potential public health emergencies ‒ to take up the question of why decades of preparation proved inadequate in the fateful case of Covid-19. This brilliant and crystal-clear analysis shows, step by step, how a long investment in anticipation ironically constrained effective action when crisis struck.”
Steven Epstein, author of Impure Science and The Quest for Sexual Health

“In this must-read analysis of the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Lakoff masterfully dissects how the concepts and techniques of preparedness blinkered expert judgment on which risks to prevent. A reminder of the complexity of human‒nonhuman interactions, it is also a call for humility in the face of the unknowns that will surely accompany the next pandemic.”
Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard Kennedy School

Andrew Lakoff is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Southern California.