The Premonition: A Pandemic Story
June 1, 2021 5:06 PM - by Lewis, Michael - Subscribe
Michael Lewis (Liar's Poker, The Big Short, The Fifth Risk) tells the story of the American response to the Covid pandemic from the perspective of a handful of infectious-disease experts. In the mid-2000s they planned the American response to a future pandemic. In late 2019 and early 2020 they found themselves trying to protect Americans from Covid.
Reviews, positive and negative:
- Guardian
- New York Times, Nick Confessore
- New York Times, Jennifer Szalai
- Washington Post
Transcript of Ezra Klein interview with Michael Lewis.
Reviews, positive and negative:
- Guardian
- New York Times, Nick Confessore
- New York Times, Jennifer Szalai
- Washington Post
Transcript of Ezra Klein interview with Michael Lewis.
I finished this book last week, am a long-time Michael Lewis fan. It's an excellent sideways look at a) how truly well prepared the US (and much of the developed world) was on paper for a pandemic and b) how dramatically they f*cked up the response thanks to bureaucracy, inability to think rationally, misinformation, miscommunication, and lack of courage. His heroes -- especially Charity & Carter -- seem like extremely interesting people with a lot to give.
On a related, tragic note, Lewis recently lost his teenage daughter Dixie in a car crash.
posted by chavenet at 3:45 PM on June 15, 2021
On a related, tragic note, Lewis recently lost his teenage daughter Dixie in a car crash.
posted by chavenet at 3:45 PM on June 15, 2021
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- Some of the basic practices of the pandemic response, like having multiple layers of interventions (the "Swiss cheese" approach) rather than a single magic bullet, were only worked out in the mid-2000s. Until that point the conventional wisdom from the 1918 pandemic, based on the experience of Philadelphia, was that public health restrictions didn't really work. Some of the people Lewis talked to figured out that this was incorrect, that Philadelphia was hit hard despite severe restrictions because it had acted too late.
- The CDC comes across as paralyzed by caution in the crisis, perhaps because top management is now politically appointed. In Lewis's portrayal, the CDC went from "there's no reason for concern" to "there's no way to stop the pandemic" overnight. Local public health officials had to take action themselves with no cover from the CDC.
- In a crisis, there's a lot of uncertainty, and waiting until you have more information can be fatal.
An illustrative anecdote, from a doctor who later spent a lot of time working on preventing medical errors: posted by russilwvong at 5:41 PM on June 1, 2021 [5 favorites]