Joe: In October 2019, an exhaustive study ranked 195 countries on pandemic preparedness. Guess who was number one? The United States. Number two was the UK. Lewis: Oh boy, I think I know where this is going. Joe: Exactly. Just a few months later, both countries had some of the worst death tolls on the planet. What on earth went wrong? Lewis: That is the billion-dollar question, isn't it? It felt like watching the star quarterback trip over his own feet on the one-yard line. Joe: That's the exact question at the heart of Fareed Zakaria's book, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World. Lewis: Right, and Zakaria is perfectly positioned to tackle this. He's not just a CNN host; he wrote this book in the chaotic early months of 2020, trying to make sense of history as it was accelerating in real-time. It's less a history of the pandemic and more a blueprint for the world it revealed. Joe: Precisely. He argues the pandemic wasn't a meteor that struck Earth and changed everything. It was more like an X-ray, revealing all the fractures and pre-existing conditions that were already there in our society. Lewis: A global stress test. And it turns out, a lot of us weren't as healthy as we thought. Joe: And Zakaria's first big lesson tackles that preparedness paradox head-on. He says what matters is not the quantity of government, but the quality.

Lewis: Okay, I have to jump in there because that's a phrase that can mean anything. A lot of people hear 'quality government' and they immediately think that's just code for 'bigger government,' more spending, more bureaucracy. How does Zakaria actually separate the two? Joe: That's the crucial distinction he makes. He's not arguing for a bigger state or a smaller state. He points out that countries with huge governments, like Germany, and countries with relatively small governments, like Taiwan and South Korea, all did remarkably well. The common thread wasn't size; it was competence, trust, and a functioning state. Lewis: Competence. That feels like a word we barely heard in 2020. Joe: And the ultimate story of incompetence, right here in the US, was the CDC's testing catastrophe. Here we have this world-renowned, gold-standard public health institution. Their one job, at that moment, was to create a reliable test for the virus. Lewis: Their Super Bowl. Joe: Their Super Bowl. And what happens? In early February 2020, they ship out their first batch of test kits to state labs across the country. And they're duds. They're faulty. One of the chemical reagents was contaminated, giving inconclusive results. For weeks, at the most critical moment of the outbreak, America was flying blind. We had no idea how far or how fast the virus was spreading. Lewis: That’s terrifying. While the virus is silently seeding itself everywhere, the one agency that's supposed to be our eyes and ears is sending out broken equipment. Joe: It's a perfect storm of institutional failure. And Zakaria argues this isn't just a one-off mistake. It points to a deeper problem in American government, something he calls a 'vetocracy.' Lewis: A vetocracy? What's that? Joe: It's a system where so many different groups—agencies, committees, special interests, local governments—have the power to block action, to say 'no,' that it becomes almost impossible to get anything done. It’s a government designed for gridlock. Lewis: So it's death by a thousand paper cuts. Joe: Exactly. And the most maddening, almost comical example he gives has nothing to do with the pandemic. It’s the decades-long failure to renovate Penn Station in New York City. Lewis: Oh, I know Penn Station. It's a national embarrassment. A concrete basement that smells like despair. Joe: It’s the busiest transit hub in the Western Hemisphere! More people pass through it daily than all three New York airports combined. And for thirty years, powerful politicians—governors, senators, mayors—have championed grand plans to rebuild it. Every single time, the project gets derailed. Lewis: By what? Joe: By everyone! One interest group objects to the design. A local board vetoes a zoning change. A rival politician blocks funding to deny their opponent a victory. The result is that nothing happens. It's a perfect illustration of the vetocracy in action. The system is so choked with veto points that it can't perform a basic, necessary function. Lewis: Wow. So you're telling me the same dynamic that keeps commuters trapped in a miserable 1960s dungeon is the same one that kept us from getting COVID tests? Joe: Zakaria's argument is yes. It's a government that has become tangled in its own red tape, a system that prioritizes preventing abuse of power over enabling effective action. And when a fast-moving crisis like a pandemic hits, that system collapses. Lewis: That failure of public institutions you're describing feels directly connected to the next big crack the pandemic exposed: massive inequality. It felt like we were all in the same storm, but in wildly different boats. For some, it became a 'pay-to-play' pandemic.

Joe: You've hit on his next major lesson: Markets Are Not Enough. The pandemic brutally exposed the limits of a society where everything, including health, has a price tag. And the story that captures this perfectly is the testing disparity. Lewis: I remember this. It was infuriating. Joe: In March 2020, the whole country is in a panic. We're being told to stay home, that there aren't enough tests. Nurses and doctors on the front lines, people with clear symptoms, were being told they had to wait days, even weeks, to get a test. Lewis: Meanwhile? Joe: Meanwhile, the entire Utah Jazz basketball team gets tested. Celebrities are posting their negative results from their mansions. Politicians and their donors are getting access to 'concierge' testing services. It was a stark, undeniable message: if you were rich and connected, you could buy your way to the front of the line. Lewis: It's the American system in a nutshell. Private opulence and public squalor. We have the best medical technology in the world, but it's only for those who can afford the VIP package. Joe: And Zakaria argues this isn't a bug in the system; it's a feature of the brand of capitalism we've built over the last 40 years. He quotes the Financial Times—hardly a socialist rag—which published a shocking editorial in April 2020. It said that to demand collective sacrifice, you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone. It called for radical reforms, even mentioning things like a universal basic income and wealth taxes. Lewis: Wow. When the FT starts sounding like Bernie Sanders, you know something has fundamentally shifted. Joe: It's a sign that the pendulum is swinging. The belief that markets can solve every problem is losing its grip. And Zakaria points to a different model, one that tries to balance dynamism with security. He looks at Denmark. Lewis: Ah, the Nordic paradise. Okay, the Danish model sounds nice, but they pay nearly 50% of their GDP in taxes. Is that even remotely realistic for a country like the US, with its deep-rooted anti-tax culture, the one that Reagan championed when he said 'Government is the problem'? Joe: It's a fair question. And Zakaria isn't suggesting we can just copy-paste the Danish system. But he wants us to look at the principle behind it, which they call 'flexicurity.' Lewis: Flexicurity. Sounds like a yoga mattress. Joe: (laughs) It's a portmanteau of flexibility and security. On one hand, it's a very free-market system. It's incredibly easy for companies to hire and fire workers. There's very little red tape. That's the 'flexibility.' Lewis: Okay, so far, so American. Joe: But here's the other side of the coin: the 'security.' If you get laid off, the government provides a robust safety net. You get generous unemployment benefits, but more importantly, you get access to extensive, high-quality job retraining programs to help you pivot to a new career. The state invests heavily in its people. Lewis: So the deal is: we won't guarantee you a specific job for life, but we will guarantee you the security and skills to navigate a changing economy. Joe: Exactly. It's a system designed to embrace change, not resist it. And the results are fascinating. A Stanford study found that the 'American Dream'—the chance of a child from the bottom fifth of the income ladder making it to the top fifth—is actually more likely to happen in Denmark than in America. Lewis: Wait, hold on. The American Dream is more alive in Denmark? Joe: According to that data, yes. It challenges our entire national mythology. Zakaria's point is that we need to have a serious conversation about what kind of capitalism we want. Do we want a system that creates 'socialism for the rich,' as we saw with the bank bailouts and corporate subsidies during the pandemic, or one that provides a genuine safety net and opportunity for everyone? Lewis: And this debate about different social contracts at home scales up to a global level. In 2020, the consensus was 'globalization is dead.' Everyone was saying we need to bring manufacturing home, shut the borders, and take care of ourselves. But Zakaria makes a bold, counter-intuitive argument.

Joe: He argues that globalization is not dead. It may be changing, but it's impossible to stop. And the pandemic itself is the ultimate proof. He tells this incredibly poignant story about a 52-year-old pediatrician in La Rioja, a remote province in Argentina. Her name was Liliana del Carmen Ruiz. Lewis: Okay. Joe: She had never traveled abroad. She lived and worked in her home province. Yet, in March 2020, she became the first person in her region to die of COVID-19. A virus born in a market in Wuhan, China, had traveled across oceans and continents to find and kill a doctor in a quiet corner of Argentina. Lewis: Wow. That really puts it in perspective. There are no walls high enough. Joe: None. As Zakaria says, "We are all connected and no one is in control." That is the terrifying and undeniable reality of our globalized world. And the knee-jerk reaction is to say, "Well, let's disconnect!" Lewis: Right. And isn't that just common sense? A lot of critics said Zakaria was just rehashing his old pro-globalization arguments here. After we saw our supply chains for basic things like masks and ventilators completely collapse because they were all made in China, isn't it just prudent to bring that manufacturing home? Joe: Zakaria's response is nuanced. He agrees that we need more resilience. Relying on a single factory in a single country for a critical product is a terrible idea. The goal should be diversification, not just reshoring. He uses the example of Apple trying to make a Mac computer in the US. Lewis: I remember that. The "Made in the USA" Mac. Joe: It was a PR disaster. They couldn't do it. Not because American workers aren't capable, but because the entire ecosystem of suppliers and expertise had moved to Asia. They couldn't even find a US company that could produce enough of one tiny, custom screw. They had to order the screws from China. Lewis: So reversing globalization is harder than just flipping a switch. Joe: It's nearly impossible. But more importantly, Zakaria argues that retreating from the world is a fatal mistake because our biggest challenges—pandemics, climate change, cyber warfare, financial crises—are inherently global. They cannot be solved by any one nation acting alone. And he gives this incredible, hopeful example from the height of the Cold War. Lewis: During the Cold War? I thought we were on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Joe: We were. But in 1958, at the World Health Assembly, a Soviet doctor named Viktor Zhdanov stood up and made an audacious proposal. He called on the world, including his arch-enemy the United States, to join forces to completely eradicate smallpox from the face of the Earth. Lewis: That's bold. Smallpox had killed hundreds of millions of people throughout history. Joe: It was a terrifying disease. And at first, the US was skeptical. They saw it as a Soviet propaganda stunt. But eventually, they came around. For the next two decades, in the midst of the Cold War, with proxy wars raging in Vietnam and elsewhere, American and Soviet scientists and doctors worked side-by-side. They shared data, they coordinated vaccination campaigns in some of the most remote parts of the world. Lewis: That's incredible. I had no idea. Joe: And in 1980, the World Health Organization officially declared that smallpox, a scourge of humanity for millennia, had been eradicated. It is the single greatest public health achievement in human history. Lewis: And it was accomplished through a partnership between two superpowers who were actively pointing nuclear missiles at each other. Joe: Exactly. That's Zakaria's ultimate point. Idealism isn't naive. Sometimes, cooperation is the most realistic, pragmatic, and necessary path forward.

Lewis: So after all this, what's the one big takeaway? Are we doomed to repeat these failures of incompetence and inequality, or is there a way out? Joe: I think the core message of the book is one of agency. The pandemic didn't write our future for us; it just handed us the pen. It created a moment of disruption so profound that real change is possible. Lewis: It shook the Etch A Sketch. Joe: It shook the Etch A Sketch. And now we get to decide what to draw. Do we retreat into our tribes, build walls, and double down on the systems that failed us? Or do we use this moment to build something better? Lewis: A more competent state, a fairer economy, a more cooperative world. Joe: Precisely. And Zakaria ends the book with a beautiful reference to the classic film Lawrence of Arabia. There's a scene where one of Lawrence's men gets lost in the desert, and everyone says his death is "written," that it's his fate. But Lawrence refuses to accept it. He rides back into the blistering sun and saves him. When he returns, he looks at his skeptical friend and says, "Nothing is written." Lewis: I love that. It’s a powerful message. The future isn't a destiny to be accepted, but a reality to be created. Joe: That’s the choice the pandemic has given us. Zakaria argues that the most realistic path forward is actually the most idealistic one: to believe that we can learn from our mistakes and build a better, more resilient, and more humane world. The question he leaves us with is, will we? Lewis: A question for all of us to ponder. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.