By Sanya Dosani Video Journalist |
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America knows how to defeat a pandemic. Or at least, American scientists know. And the rank-and-file civil servants who wrote hundreds of documents on the matter over the last 15 years? They know, too. Of course, this only matters when an administration embraces science. |
In June, Adam Ellick, the executive producer of Opinion Video, asked me and my colleague Andrew Blackwell to develop a short film exploring how a country that wrote the first pandemic playbook still failed so miserably in its response. We struggled to find an answer more complex than: “Um, Trump.” |
But while reporting on all that went wrong, we stumbled on one aspect of the U.S. pandemic plan that actually went right: defeating the virus outside our borders. Since 2005, the U.S. government has worked with other nations to design their own pandemic playbooks. |
Much of this was pretty standard work — training epidemiologists, upgrading research labs, launching programs to detect new viruses and more. Those investments, combined with a global eagerness to improve public health systems, put almost every region in a better position to respond to Covid-19 this year. |
The initiator of that multibillion-dollar effort? George W. Bush. |
It’s a quintessential American narrative that I couldn’t help but be wary of: We wrote the documents and then decided to proselytize them all over the world? Sounds suspicious. |
So I tracked down the beneficiaries of that work. |
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A Vietnamese contact tracer who graduated from a rigorous Centers for Disease Control and Prevention training program told me how techniques he learned from U.S. training helped the Ministry of Health contain the virus quickly and efficiently. So far, only 35 people have died from Covid-19 in Vietnam. |
The C.D.C. also inspired the creation of a European counterpart and South Korea’s renowned Covid-19 testing effort was modeled after America’s public health lab system. |
President George W. Bush understood that fighting pandemics has to be a multinational effort — that when it comes to viruses, all of our fates are tied. Which is why American scientists are behind some amazing Covid-19 victories around the world. Reporting that story made me a little prouder of my country at a time when pride’s been rather difficult to muster. |
So Andrew and I teamed up with co-producers Adam Westbrook and Alexander Stockton to tell this uplifting — if surprising — American success story. |
It’s also a hopeful reminder that we already have all the ingredients for a better future right here at home. We just have to use them. |
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