The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

For many who may learn between the traces, the censored information out of China was terrifying. However the president insisted there was nothing to fret about.

Luckily, we’re nonetheless a nation of skeptics. Luckily, there are these amongst us who examine pandemics and are keen to look unflinchingly at worst-case situations. Michael Lewis’s taut and sensible nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries towards the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.

The characters you’ll meet in these pages are as fascinating as they’re surprising. A thirteen-year-old woman’s science challenge on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a really grown-up mannequin of illness management. An area public-health officer makes use of her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and divulges nice truths about American society. A secret workforce of dissenting docs, nicknamed the Wolverines, has every part essential to struggle the pandemic: sensible backgrounds, world-class labs, prior expertise with the pandemic scares of chook flu and swine flu…every part, that’s, besides official permission to implement their work.

Michael Lewis isn’t shy about calling these individuals heroes for his or her refusal to observe directives that they know to be primarily based on misinformation and unhealthy science. Even the web, as essential as it’s to their alternate of concepts, poses a threat to them. They by no means know for positive who else is likely to be listening in.