In the first months of 2020, pandemic panic has spread faster than the novel coronavirus itself. Rural communities in China have built illegal blockades for self-isolation. Singapore has prohibited all travel to and from China. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued the first quarantine in over fifty years, and the Chinese government is carrying out the largest quarantine in human history. Epidemiologists are predicting that more people will contract COVID-19 than originally estimated, and we still aren’t certain how quickly the virus spreads or mutates.

Only one thing seems clear: we wouldn’t be in this situation if we’d been better prepared. Former CDC director Tom Frieden and others have warned that neither the US nor the world is ready for a global pandemic. Alarm bells have been rung before, time and again, but the status quo remains in place. Why? Because investments in global health preparedness are motivated by myopic self-interest and a misplaced faith in the free market. Private interests are privileged over the public good.

Pandemic preparedness is the idea that global health practitioners can take steps to prevent, rapidly identify, and contain a dangerous new pathogen at its source. Rich nations like the US tend to focus their preparedness efforts, misguidedly, on biochemical agents relevant to national security. Every few years, select members of the US government participate in a bioterrorism simulation. The original, 2001’s “Dark Winter,” played out the rapid and devastating course of events following an aerosolized smallpox release on US soil.