REVIEW
The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind | Joseph Nocera, Bethany Lee McLean, authors
This book deals essentially with the business aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the multitude of problems that collectively resulted in multiple failures, both in the states and worldwide. As working journalists with extensive business sector experience, the two authors of this book previously collaborated on an important dissection of the 2008 financial crisis. Both well-connected with legacy media, Nocera has also been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
“The Big Fail” documents the underlying issues that seemed to compound during attempts to manage the pandemic as it spread around the world. Issues are detailed such as shortages in masks and related PPE equipment, often accompanied by shady dealings. A number of schemes are exposed, such as taking used masks, repackaging and sending them from Vietnam to buyers in New York City.
Inept governmental response at the local, regional, and national level, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and restrictions on travel are all discussed. The authors outline not only the negative impact on supply chains, but also how people of different demographics were disproportionately affected.
Much of the book is focused on financial issues such as investment in pharmaceutical companies as well as patents related to the development of vaccines. Alongside, the financial viability of hospitals and nursing homes is discussed, including the inability to retain sufficient staffing, sometimes accompanied with fraudulent activity making matters worse. Throughout the book, the writers indicate that disadvantaged neighborhoods consistently received the lowest standard of care throughout the crises.
Despite the well-presented data and effective highlighting of key failure points of governmental response at the height of the pandemic, a careful reading of this book reveals some problematic assumptions. For example, the writers unquestioningly present the narrative that the clearly unproven Covid-19 vaccines developed under emergency use authorization are safe and effective; in reality, a multiplicity of documented evidence points to the contrary. Any facts to the contrary are typically relegated to fringe media sources, so as adherents to the legacy media narrative, it is understandably very costly for the authors to risk contradicting mainstream thinking.
From a layout perspective, with over 400 pages of pages of information covering activities, articles, speeches, videos and more, there is essentially no supplemental evidence presented in footnotes or an index: the reader must take the author’s attestations on faith. Thus, despite the otherwise clearly-conveyed thesis—especially the well-presented examples of financial concerns overriding people’s needs—the onus placed on the reader to locate missing critical information (such as medically-related concerns about potentially harmful side-effects of the experimental vaccines) is hardly dealt with at all. However, one could infer that the authors did not wish to deal with such topics: they were dealing with business fail, not medical fail.
In summary, rather than seeking the “whole truth and nothing but the truth” about the Covid-19 pandemic, the authors seem to be comfortable holding exclusively to their mainstream media view of what’s important about the pandemic itself, which leaves them essentially blind to underlying truths about the decades of work which both preceded Covid-19, which reveal a deeper, more catastrophic fissure in the system that preceded the outbreak in 2020.
To compensate for such lack of understanding to be found in The Big Fail, you the reader may wish to take the time to review some of the critical issues of Covid-19 which this book does not cover, found on this webpage.
Richard Mann, PhD