Like Michael Lewis's The Premonition, Andy Slavitt's Preventable is a story of how people in authority disregarded warnings and allowed the COVID-19 virus to gain a foothold in the United States.
But while Lewis described the efforts of a number of far-sighted prophets, Slavitt concentrates on just one---himself.
Slavitt is an interesting figure---a political operator and member of the professional-managerial class, who influences policy, moves back and forth between government and the private sector, but would be unknown to the public except for this book.
He was an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, a consultant for McKinsey & Co., and founder of a company called HealthAllies, and then worked for United Health Group after it acquired HealthAllies.
He served the Obama administration as head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2014, and was a medical adviser to the Biden administration during its first few months.
His power comes from being embedded in a network of politicians, corporate CEOs, wealthy philanthropists and academics, who all answer his phone calls and listen to what he has to say.
Preventable is about how he tried to alert the public to the danger, while also trying, from behind the scenes, to influence the Trump administration to take action before it was too late.
His book is a good overview of the Trump administration's pandemic response and of the inadequacies of the American medical care system generally.
Much of the criticism of Trump is based on a knee-jerk response to his vulgar and offensive comments on Twitter and elsewhere, which don't matter, and on a gullible acceptance of charges of collusion with Russian and Ukrainian leaders, which were either bogus or trivial.
Slavitt did a good job of showing the real problem with Trump, which was his inadequacy as an administrator and leader. Trump refused to face unpleasant facts. He thought of policy only in terms of public relations, not in terms of consequences, and he failed to think ahead even about public relations.
He calculated that closings are unpopular and openings are popular, so he shifted responsibilities for closings onto governors of states while positioning himself as the champion of openings.
As damning as Slavitt's portrait of Trump is, it will not change the minds of Trump's admirers because of Slavitt's obvious bias and partisanship.
The only named persons he holds accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic are Trump supporters, members of Trump's administration and Donald Trump himself. Democrats get a free pass.
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