Hi everybody I'm Diane Brady. I'm here with Joe Nissera journalist and author who along

with journalist Bethany McClain has just published the big fail what the pandemic revealed about who America

protects and who it leaves behind good to see you Joe nice to see you Diane

so I feel like a lot of people would say we're still living in a somewhat pandemic economy, post-pandemic economy.

What I know that you're the big fail sort of immediately says to me that there

were lessons here to be had about what we didn't do right. What do you think was

most surprising to you in the research that you did?

Was that there really was zero science behind lockdowns, which were described at least in blue states as an example of following the science.

But when you actually looked into it, there has never been a study pre-pandemic about the efficacy of lockdowns and post-pandemic the

efficacy is very much in doubt. Yeah in some ways when I heard about the test case they were using was the Spanish flu from essentially, you know, a century earlier, which may not be the best test case for what to do in the 21st century.

When you say that was surprising, is it really when you're looking at the damage that

lockdown's caused?

Because I certainly think about it with regard to my children and schooling.

Oh, without question. I mean the worst, the worst outcome of lockdowns was the effect it had on children, especially disadvantaged children who were

deprived of the ability to go to school.

And it had ramifications from suicidal thoughts to lack of hot food that kids

rely on to you know the basic of basics which is you know what are you learning so many kids just

dropped out of school just abandoned school it's just you can't overstate how bad it was

you know what you tackle so much in this book you talk about you know the industrialization of hospitals you talk about politics policies

Let's focus on on the politics for a second. You know, we've seen so much extremism

now and certainly a lot of people start with blaming Donald Trump. To what extent is it fair to see him as the

villain in this scenario? Well his ability to polarize or the fact that he was such a polarizing figure definitely

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