Review: 'How to Prevent the Next Pandemic'

If only I led a government or a nongovernmental organization, then maybe I would be cheering with the same unabashed optimism that Bill Gates reveals in his passionate book about the world’s preparedness—or lack thereof—to prevent the next pandemic. As a private citizen, I am left worried about the world’s ability to move the needle on thwarting the spread of viruses as they arise, especially given the wave after wave of COVID-19 variants, the introduction of monkeypox into our collective viral lexicon, and the resurgence of polio. In short, there is cause for concern.

Indeed, in his 304-page tome, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, Gates first details how the response to the COVID-19 outbreak was middling at best and could have been exponentially worse. He states matter-of-factly that despite people raising the alarm for decades about novel diseases that could kill millions, the world didn’t respond with sufficient urgency. There wasn’t enough investment in the tools needed to prepare for a pandemic properly, i.e., nations were caught flat-footed, militaries weren’t running large-scale drills, and city, state, and federal governments had no practice outside of natural disasters to combat the spread of a deadly virus like COVID-19....

Read the full book review by Lauren Brathwaite, content editor at Philanthropy News Digest.