Hello and this is Matt Dilea is confused. This is Matt Dilea and this is

guest episode. This is not a solo episode. I have a guest. I haven't had guests very much recently but every once in a while I do and every once in a while I will and I'm excited about this guest.

This is, his name is John Sternfeld.

He wrote a book called Unprepared.

Unprepared, unprepared is about how we were unprepared.

The full title is Unprepared America in the time of coronavirus and it is about how we were unprepared for that

and I read the book. It's

What is most interesting about it and John and I talk about this and I'm going to make this short so we can get right into my conversation with John which was fantastic but it's it's

it is basically a compilation

of

in chronological order from the very first uh... moment that this was written about anywhere or spoken about anywhere.

I think the very first part of the book is actually a Wii chat message sent from China and it tracks sort of like the very beginning of the moment that we became aware of coronavirus.

It's deadly potential.

It's potential to become a pandemic.

How that unraveled.

And then it proceeds to tell in order, but again without any commentary at all.

And it quotes politicians and it actually, John I talk about this, but he took away the sort of political affiliation of the politicians.

So it's really just what people said, what doctors said, what politicians said, even commentary, like op-eds,

editorialized stuff, none of that is in the book.

It's purely our slow developing

understanding of what this was, what this could be, through the mouths of people who were at the forefront, people in the World Health Organization, the CDC,

American politicians, John Hopkins University, just everything. And takes us up through I believe early June.

...