Technology and Innovation

COVID-19 has confirmed the U.S. and global vulnerabilities that were repeatedly identified in high-level reports, commissions, and intelligence assessments on pandemic threats for nearly two decades prior to this pandemic. COVID-19 has underscored several truths about pandemics and revealed important shortcomings in current global and national capacities to prepare for, detect, and respond to them. This pandemic will not be the last one that the United States or the world faces. To better prepare for the next crisis, and future waves of the current one, the United States will need to devote considerable political capital and economic resources to reducing the domestic and global vulnerabilities that jeopardize individual, national, and global health security. In this first half of this report, the Task Force presents its major findings grouped into three sections: the inevitability of pandemics and the logic of preparedness; the global response to COVID-19, including the performance of WHO, multilateral forums, and the main international legal agreement governing pandemic disease; and the performance of the United States, also drawing lessons from other countries, including several whose outcomes contrast favorably with the U.S. experience.