Dying in a Leadership Vacuum

An editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine provides a sobering and accurate assessment of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The editorial notes that countries with far fewer resources than the United States have handled the pandemic much better. For example, Vietnam, which has neither our medical expertise nor our manufacturing capacity, has had a death rate almost 2,000 times lower than the United States.

Click here to read the entire editorial.