Michael Lewis recently published his new book “The Premonition” about the pandemic America went through in 2020.
He is the author of books like Liar’s Poker, The Blind Side and The Big Short plus various insightful articles he wrote for magazines like Vanity Fair. His books are usually not too long at about 200+ pages and he has a way of making any topic interesting, challenging the reader to develop a new perspective from another angle of the camera lens.
He is one of the few writers I actively sought to check out new articles that he might have recently published as he has a diverse area of interest that spans from the most popular to the mundane. His critical eye and investigative journalism skills help to eventually craft a story that captivates the reader.
As with all humans, his views may be biased sometimes but yet it can be informative, unlike American news media that claim to be neutral all the time but yet are unable to get out of their echo chamber of political views. He tries to only concentrate on subjects related to America which sometimes do affect the rest of the world.
This book was an unexpected follow-up to his last book “The Fifth Risk”, written in 2018, almost 2 years into the Trump presidency. The previous book talks about the systematic dismantling of the infrastructure of the American government by a short-sighted and clueless administration driven only by costs and dollar signs while abandoning the wisdom of past presidencies.
This new book is a perfect lead up to where America was ill-prepared for the full onslaught of the COVID19 pandemic. A leaderless nation plagued by fears and lies, running an ill-equipped infrastructure that has already been stripped bare. It was the perfect storm waiting to happen.
This book tells of a small group of brave individuals who saw the storm approaching and tried all means to stop its devastation when no one was manning the house. In their little ways, they tried to warn as many people as they can by showing all their findings and scientific facts to whoever would listen. They even had a pandemic reaction playbook prepared for execution but none in authority had the balls to press the red button.
A few characters in the book stood out as heroes in the fight against the virus. This group of misfits eventually grew to an expanding email list with regular conference calls. The group was named Wolverines after the show Red Dawn – they were the group that fought against the Russian invading forces.
The book starts with a teenager’s school project. She decided that her contest entry topic should be pandemics and the best ways to prevent a virus from spreading in a community. Her dad, being a computer geek and scientist, got involved as it interested him immensely. The event became a father-daughter bonding project.
The discovery of the most effective method to break the virus cycle after multiple experiments were surprisingly simple. Close all schools immediately! It will break the cycle of the contagious spread of the virus. When the pandemic hit last year, that was the last thing America did as it did not want to cause panic. It had still refused to acknowledge the seriousness of the virus till it was too late.
Back in 2005, President Bush had tasked a team to come up with a pandemic response for the nation. This is where the name Carter Mecher appeared. He was part of that team that wrote the report which was ignored last year. He is the main hero of the Wolverine team, working from his basement and thinking out of the box for solutions and quantifying actionable responses against COVID19.
They were trying to shout as loud as they can to whoever will listen but no one in the administration did. After a “false” alarm many years ago, the CDC had become an organization that refuses to stick its neck out for fear of causing a panic. When Trump told the governors that they were on their own to fight the pandemic, the Wolverines decided to turn their attention to a state that is receptive to their findings.
Charity Dean came into the picture here. She convinced the California governor using the team’s data to finally become the first state to implement a shutdown. In hindsight now, that action had prevented it from hitting its worst-case scenario which they had projected.
The other amazing person in the book was Joe Derisi. He was the inventor of the Virochip which could identify and nail down the origins of any virus. It breaks down a new virus into its basic components and compares that to another similar virus to spot the differences. That helps narrow down the differences and then do a deep dive on the extra components. For example, 1,000 versus 1,010 and then to investigate the extra 10 extra that was discovered. There was an interesting side story on how they solved the mystery of why snakes were dying globally. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/08/98679/mysterious-snake-disease-decoded
He was working at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and managed to come up with the first functioning COVID19 testing centre nationally. Testing was the most critical weapon in the fight against the virus before vaccines were available. But they were prevented from maximizing their lab due to much red tape. Politically, the negative association to a FaceBook related company also caused much regrettable distrust.
The comedy of errors and the fumbling of the toothless leadership (Trump and CDC) was tragic to observe in the second half of the book as the Wolverines tried to push through to save as many lives as possible.
As the book was released in May 2021, the COVID19 story has not ended and it is still evolving. The unsatisfactory ending of this book means that Lewis should have the opportunity to write another follow-up book as the timeline of this one ends in 2020.
An enlightening book to read. It looks promising that there is high hope that we will be better prepared for the next pandemic with the lessons learned. I know now that there are already existing tools to help us better defend ourselves the next time. A highly recommended book to read! 3 thumbs up…
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