The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

Hmm, okay, I thought this would be a slightly different book. What I got was much more about the Before Covid Times and the pandemic's start. (I was hunting for a book to explain and help me digest the pandemic, comprehensively, start to finish.)

Anyway, Michael Lewis, as always, writes with an eye for warm-hearted, human details. There's something also very red blooded American guy about his writing. Which is fine. He's like the non-fiction Tom Clancy. He's very readable.

Basically, this book follows a handful of Highly Competent People, all working at various levels of government, and all basically stifled by the creaky machinations of our fraying, decaying, crappy government institutions. Each of these competent people struggle to (a) make every leader/authority understand the seriousness of the oncoming pandemic, and (b) do what they can - in their haphazard, not-centrally-planned, not-technically-in-charge way - to limit the damage. Meanwhile, American leadership is asleep at the wheel.

I had mixed feelings, honestly, because it initially felt as if red-blooded non-fic Clancy was making an argument FOR competent individualism OVER functioning collective action and institutions. Color me biased. Now that I finished the book, I actually think Lewis's argument is the opposite: even the MOST competent, well-meaning individuals will get drowned out by broken systems. And these individuals certainly did. Lewis opens his book by noting that while pre-Covid “war game” simulations (by the WHO? I forget) of a worldwide pandemic always modeled that America would fare the “best”, we actually did a pretty shitty job at managing Covid - with more excess deaths and suffering. It was like the country embodied, yet again, that infamous chart showing how much of an outlier America is re: healthcare spending vs. outcomes: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/mt/business/assets_c/2011/04/us%20health%20care%20costs-thumb-600x326-47611.png

This is (again) individualized in one of the competent individuals - who is seen by many as a “guru” and with the most humble yet clear-eyed approach on how to manage a pandemic - loses his own mother to Covid. It's a bitterly ironic tragedy, and, I guess, Lewis uses this as his point: again, even the most competent, informed individual will suffer if our systems are broken.

loved it but got a little lost in it not in a good way

DNF @ 30% it wasn???t bad. It hit too close to home. I???m still hurting from lockdown.

We knew, but did not act

I wish this story had a happy ending, but it's fascinating to read about missteps the US Government has made in public health, and in particular in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As I would expect from Lewis, the book has a quick and engaging narrative flow that makes it very easy to get deep into the book. That the content is still relevant 17 months into a pandemic also helps. It's infuriating to know the tools have been in the toolbox for 15 years, and the speed of government lead to a lot of really unnecessary consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. It's like an insiders view to the start of the pandemic without all the controversy around the measures that would come and go afterwards. The book doesn't pull a lot of punches in its criticisms of bureaucracy and institutional ego that so often, rightly, take the blame when things go horribly wrong. If you think you can read it without getting stressed about the content, I highly recommend checking it out.

Terrifying but a must-read for anyone affected by the public health system in America...which is all of us.

3.5 stars. The title is accurate - this is a pandemic story, not the pandemic story. Anyone looking for a comprehensive account of COVID-19 will be disappointed. Michael Lewis instead offers what he does best, profiling several interesting, little known individuals (no Dr. Faucis here) who played key roles in the early response to the pandemic, and occasionally zooming out to get the bigger picture. The book jacket indicates otherwise, but this is not an indictment of Donald Trump. In fact, Lewis believes that 45 was only a “comorbidity” of the problem. There were other factors that were arguably much more important, including the lack of coordination among government agencies, the CDC's reluctance to take any action that might make them look bad, the profit motive of healthcare companies, and the woefully underfunded, isolated county and state public health departments. There were definitely heroes like the ones Lewis depicts who worked long hours for little pay and no recognition, but the deck was always stacked against them.I was surprised that Lewis devotes more than half of the book to events that took place prior to the first known COVID case. His point is that the seeds of the tragedy were sown long before Trump insisted that the situation was under control. But it makes for some frustrating reading, as I spent the first 150 pages wondering when Lewis was going to get to the good stuff. And then he just kind of trails off at the end, with a whimper instead of a bang. I was a big fan of Lewis' previous book, [b:The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy 46266188 The Fifth Risk Undoing Democracy Michael Lewis https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562687004l/46266188.SY75.jpg 62158447], but The Premonition feels a bit half baked.