Here’s a promise: There’s one book I will not read this year and it will never be featured in the “Bookmarked” feature on this website.

“Preventable" by Andy Slavitt.

The last thing Americans need right now is a lecture by an English major about how we didn’t sacrifice enough during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yep, that’s Slavitt’s grotesque thesis. This English major, MBA and former Goldman Sachs investment banker who did a short stint in the Biden White House as a Covid-19 advisor is scolding the country about how selfish we were during the past 15 months.

Slavitt’s hoping to cash in on his vast virological “expertise” with a bestseller.

Have a listen and enjoy what passes for an interview by a television reporter:

This guy had the audacity to say that if we’d been willing to “sacrifice a little bit for one another” we could have saved more lives.

In this clown’s eyes, the deaths and illnesses that spread across our county - regardless of mitigation measures - weren’t the fault of the Chinese who unleashed a virus on the world. They were our fault, for being so damned self-centered.

Is he nuts?

Ordinary Americans sacrificed plenty during the pandemic. Too much, as it turns out.

We sacrificed jobs and savings. Small businesses that took years to build were closed, never to reopen.

(The Wall Street Journal reports that at least 200,000 businesses were shuttered permanently. “Barber shops, nail salons and other providers of personal services appear to be hardest hit.”)

We celebrated holidays alone. We buried our dead without funerals. We ordered grandparents to avoid their grandchildren. We told parents to make their college kids sleep in the garage when they came home from school. 

We sentenced our seniors to solitary confinement.

We couldn’t attend services in our churches or synagogues. We missed cancer screenings.

We needlessly closed schools and turned many of our children into suicidal mental patients. Other kids have fallen so far behind in their academics that they may never catch up.

We endured lies from the CDC and goalpost-moving by feckless governors.

Most importantly, we sacrificed our civil liberties.

This book is a clumsy attempt to pile blame for the pandemic on ordinary Americans.

Easy, I suppose, for a guy who probably didn’t know a single person who lost a job during the lockdowns or anyone who missed a paycheck.

Especially easy for someone hoping to score a literary payday off the suffering of a nation.