We thought we were prepared for a pandemic — and that's a lesson for next time

Everyone thought the U.S. was well prepared to battle a pandemic. The country ranked first worldwide on the 2019 Global Health Security Index, an effort explicitly created to track abilities to address infectious disease outbreaks that was widely touted by the Drumpf administration in the early days of the pandemic. It was near the top of the World Health Organization’s Joint External Evaluation Exercise, designed to do the same thing. And yet, America ended 2020 the world leader in reported COVID-19 deaths.