Gottlieb: History will remember America's 'great failing' in the coronavirus crisis

The United States lacked much-needed "situational awareness" as COVID-19 spread during the beginning of the pandemic, and that will be remembered as its "great failing," the former head of the FDA says.

Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, spoke Friday with CNBC and was asked to comment on those who feel that lockdowns put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19 were "too stringent." In response, Gottlieb argued that "we absolutely had to shut down" areas like New York City but that some places, such as Dallas and Miami, "probably" didn't need stay-at-home orders early on in the crisis.

However, Gottlieb continued, the problem was that as the pandemic began, the U.S. simply didn't know which areas were experiencing a major outbreak.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"We had no idea where the virus was and was not spreading because we didn't have diagnostic testing," Gottlieb said. "I think when history looks back on this, the lack of situational awareness at that time is going to be remembered as the great failing, because we had to assume that it was spreading far more widely in the United States at that point in time than it was."

"Ideally," Gottlieb went on to say, the United States should have been able to implement mitigation steps specifically in areas where testing has shown that the virus was spreading, but ultimately, this lack of testing in February and March was the "key missing element" in mounting an "effective" response.

Previously, Gottlieb co-wrote a column in The Wall Street Journal laying out the need to "shore up the ability to respond to future pandemics with adequate testing" because, he concluded, "America's lack of preparation" for the COVID-19 pandemic "had devastating health and economic consequences." Brendan Morrow