There's no reason to believe that this was a deliberate pathogen, but I do think what this proved is that a respiratory pathogen poses an asymmetric risk to Western democracies.

The old thinking was that a nation state would never use a

biological weapon that could blow back on them. But if a nation state thinks that

they're going to be more adept at thwarting the impact of that biological weapon, they may see it as a tool that could encumber us much more than it can encumber them.

Welcome to post-Corona, where we try to understand COVID-19's lasting impact on the economy,

culture and geopolitics. I'm Dan Sinor. How will we know when we actually arrive at the post-corona phase?

This is the second part of a two-part conversation on this question, the first of which was two

episodes ago when we looked at Israel, what I call Vaccination Nation.

And today we'll talk about the U.S, trying to understand when we will arrive at post-Corona,

and what is standing in our way.

As we post this podcast, the US is vaccinated about 7.6% of our population. The UK is at 11.7%. Canada and Germany are hovering around 2.5%. France is at 1.7% and Israel over 50%.

My mother, sister, brother-in-law and even one of my nieces in Israel have already gotten

both jabs.

To help us understand what is happening in the US, we welcome Scott Gottlieb, who served

as the 23rd Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

Dr Gottlieb is currently on the boards of Pfizer and Alumina and a special partner with the venture

capital firm New Enterprise Associates.

He's a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and previously Scott served in a number of other roles at the FDA,

including Deputy Commissioner.

He was also a clinical assistant professor at NYU's School of Medicine.

Scott and I have been talking talking and he has laid out a

pretty interesting take on how we'll quickly hit a tipping point on

...