I'm an epidemiologist, though not an infectious disease (ID) epidemiologist. I'm nowhere near the top of my field, and still fairly young, but I have good credentials and some idea of what I'm talking about (everyone is trained in ID epi in graduate school, regardless of what you go on to specialize in).
I don't have much to contribute here except to say that where I was once very proud of my profession and American public health more generally, the pandemic has left me deeply embarrassed, so much so that I often wish these days I had something else to say when people ask me what I do for a living. The stuff Lewis (who I don't particularly love, by the way) talks about is barely scratching the surface on how bad things are behind the curtain in US public health.
There are huge structural factors that are "not our fault" (e.g. the 70-year project to gut "government" at all levels in this country), but there are others that very much are, from scientific rigor to public communication to what happens when normally pretty powerless people are suddenly given some power, and what they do with it.
HN readers will not like to read this, and I fully expect plenty of downvotes on this burner account, but the fact that a man like Anthony Fauci was (a) chosen to be our Covid guardian angel and intelligent-technocrat foil to Donald Trump at all after his abhorrent behavior during the AIDS crisis in the 80s [1], and (b) allowed to remain in this position throughout the past year, as hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of Covid, is ghastly. Even if the deaths are "not his fault" somehow, or that he's been trying his best in a bad system -- I'm sorry, but the buck stops at the top. If you're presiding over a disaster of this scale, you need to be replaced.
That a country like Vietnam - poor and rural - could embarrass the US in handling this is deeply sad.
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/whitewashing-aids-history_b_4...