ABSTRACT
By the beginning of May 2021, a year and a half after the first case of COVID-19 probably appeared in China, there had been nearly 150 million total cases and more than three million deaths worldwide. In Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, conservative British historian Niall Ferguson acknowledges that it is impossible ‘to write the history of a disaster that is not yet over’. In Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus, an in-depth chronological look by two Sunday Times investigative journalists, Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott, at Britain’s response to COVID-19 offers a case study of failed leadership and ideological blindness. On paper, the UK was once one of the best-prepared countries in the world for a disease outbreak such as COVID.
