Safer: How to Turn Fear Into Action and Crisis Into Community

"Dr. Raj Panjabi may be too humble to call himself a hero, but I think he fits the bill."--Bill Gates

An expert-driven playbook for planning and dealing with emergency situations, from floods to illness, revealing how we can become more adaptable and connected, from the acclaimed disease expert and former head of the White House Pandemic Response Team.

If you can't trust authority, who can you trust?

At a moment when reliable information--whether from top-down authority or from the noise of social media and AI--feels more difficult to discern, we turn to experts like Dr. Raj Panjabi to share his insights and expertise from decades on the front lines of crisis. As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nicholas Kristof writes, Dr. Panjabi is "one of the best-placed people to guide us through this terrain and keep us safe," whether we are facing down the next pandemic or a personal emergency.
In Safer, Dr. Panjabi draws on his wisdom to explain how we might be more resilient, self-reliant, and community oriented in chaotic times. In these pages, you will take away critical information to keep yourself and your family safe, including:

• the people you're already connected to are necessary to your safety
• a pandemic is as much about conditions as it is about contagion
• how to move past helplessness, fear, and denial and into action
• a step-by-step playbook for getting through any crisis
• the truth about Covid's origins and what we can do better next time

In exploring how we can translate the lessons of recent epidemics and pandemics into a safer future, Dr. Panjabi shares his experience working in places ranging from the rural clinics of Liberia to the cities of Massachusetts, from Alaskan fishing villages to the White House. He writes not only as a doctor navigating life and death decisions on the ground, but as a son, a father, and a husband navigating his own family's fears and vulnerabilities.
He also reveals how we can become more adaptable, curious, and connected in the face of threat. We can't avoid viruses or even pandemics, but if we proactively strengthen our homes and our communities, and develop safety strategies now, we can emerge from the next pandemic safer and more connected than we were before. Our safety lies in our ability to move at the speed of trust.