I’m tired of talking about election autopsies and Cabinet choices, so I thought I’d pick a topic we can all get excited about: government pandemic preparation. Who knows when the next pandemic will hit. It could be next year or next century, but it will happen. Very recently, a pig became infected with bird flu which is a jump I can do without (apparently pig DNA is staggeringly similar to human DNA). That’s not to say we should get the masks out again, but it is to say our government should be thinking honestly about what it got right and what it got wrong the last time around.
Of course, that sounds obvious, but politics always interferes. Today’s columnist is here to set politics aside, which is why he’s one of my favorites. He has his political bent, but he’s not an ideologue. If the other side gets something right, he’s happy to give them credit. If it gets something wrong, he doesn’t dismiss the entire movement. You’ll see plenty of that in today’s column. It’s a bit in the weeds, but it is also the strongest, most intellectually honest analysis I’ve seen of where our pandemic response was and where it needs to be.