PublicAffairs will publish LESSONS FROM THE COVID WAR: An Investigative Report by the Covid Crisis Group on April 25, 2023. This powerful report on what went wrong—and right—with America’s Covid response, from a team of 34 experts, shows how Americans faced the worst peacetime catastrophe of modern times.
“The controversy basically turned into a political blame game, and then people pinned themselves to certain positions, which tends to close the mind rather than keep it open,” said Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor who chairs the Covid Crisis Group, a team of prominent experts who have spent more than two years probing the virus response.
A broad, bipartisan group of senators is coalescing around a plan for an independent panel to investigate the origins of the coronavirus and the U.S. response.
A broad, bipartisan group of senators is coalescing around a plan for an independent panel to investigate the origins of the coronavirus and the U.S. response.
A lot of preparatory work has already been done by the Covid Commission Planning Group, a panel working with a wide range of experts, and ought to be utilized.
“A nation with tremendous wealth and resources was caught unaware and unprepared for the most serious public health threat in more than a century. And though this story is still unfolding as the Delta variant of the virus is driving a new surge of cases and deaths, President Biden and Congress must commit now to conducting an honest and clear-eyed examination of the national response to the pandemic.”
“Many national and global calamities were later subject to bipartisan investigation: Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War, the John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, 9/11. A great start already exists with the Covid Commission Planning Group led by Philip Zelikow, but it needs a sense that the White House, Congress and other national leaders will welcome the probe and assist with a full-blown independent investigation.”
“Bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress to create a bipartisan panel, but a leader of the Sept. 11 commission thinks a nonpartisan effort would have more success in the current climate.”
“Although the pandemic continues to rage across other parts of the world, it is not too soon to begin a systematic, comprehensive process to learn from both the failures and successes in responding to the outbreak.”
“Incorporating the voices of those most directly affected is critical to any commission’s success, says former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, the 9/11 Commission co-chair.”
