What Went Wrong

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 UniversityA 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 TimesAn 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 ResearchWhat 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

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.