We thought we were a nation ready for any crisis. Covid showed us how much we have yet to learn.

America's response to Covid cost too many lives, set our children back in their education, and forever damaged our trust in our government's ability to protect and guide us through crises. Conflicting values and strategies received too little ethical consideration as we blindly followed an overly simplified prime directive to stop infections and save lives.

In What Went Wrong, Gregory Pence reveals how the best of intentions resulted in disastrous consequences for our nation. As many as 400,000 non-Covid deaths occurred as a by-product of poor planning and implementation of medical policies. We continue to realize the long-term effects on our nation, including millions of children now being years behind in reading and math. Proportionally, America suffered more deaths during the pandemic than any other developed country.

So where do we go from here? Hindsight on the pandemic shows us how important and complex the ethical implications of public health policy are. Unless we learn from America's failures, the next pandemic could be even worse.

Gregory Pence is an award-winning bioethicist with nearly 50 years' of experience in the field, teaching at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center. His books include Pandemic Bioethics, Brave New Bioethics, How to Build a Better Human: An Ethical Blueprint, and Overcoming Addiction: Seven Imperfect Solutions and the End of America's Greatest Epidemic. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama.

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