The Premonition

A Pandemic Story

Michael Lewis 2021

Fascinating. Sadly, no index, and many people involved. Dates uncertain, chronology confusing, Difficult to keep track.

• The CDC was politically castrated for Swine Flu, blame-avoiding rather than effective, now an academic paper mill

People

• Laura Glass 13yo p3
• Bob Glass father p3
  • Sandia
• Dr. Charity Dean p10
  • 32yo internal medicine resident in 2011, divorced, 3 children
  • Junction City, fundy church
  • OSU Microbiology

  • Tulane medical school & public health

  • deputy health officer Santa Barbara County
    • parking lot autopsy with garden shears
  • p126 grew up poor in Junction City, nondenominational know-nothing church, commanded at 22 to marry
• Dr. Stephen Hosea, p36-37 NIH, Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital
• Paige Bateson nurse p23-25 42-
• Carter Mecher p60 MEH-sher
• Lisa Koonin p96 CDC Division of Partnerships and Strategic Alliances

• Joe DeRisi UCSD

• p28 Thomashefsky Clinic, sloppy treatments for rich people

• p32 Kate DeBurgh, "...need to be willing to lose your job"

• p36-p41 UCSB meningitis
• p43- December 2017 Santa Ynez fire, January 2018 Montecito mudslide, Casa Dorinda wealthy old-age home
• p50 US Pandemic plan, October 2005, Dr. Rajeev Venkayya (age 38), Biodefense Directorate
• p54 Dr. Richard Hatchett DHS reserve medical corps
• p60 Dr. Carter Mecher hyper problem focused ICU doc @VA
  • p62 prescribes 1/evening beer for VA patient
    • p65 VA chief Gen. Omar Bradley connects system to medical schools

  • p66 Prime Health: So exclusive you fought to get in build teams, take data, identify weaknesses

• p69 Human Error by James Reason (no libraries nearby)

  • overlapping systems, layering swiss cheese until the holes don't overlap
• p71 Carter Mecher VA "Lessons Learned" website, intended for medical error, used instead for self-glorification
• p75 NRP National Response Plan, 400 pages of "government language"
• p79 Bob Glass model matches 1957-58 flu pandemic data
  • p81 Daughter visits DC, tells VA infectious disease specialist about model, White House Richard Hatchett calls hours later
• p86 Close schools and reduce social interaction, disease fell of a cliff, a phase change like water to ice
• p89 Bob Glass: Bed on stilts beside computer. Promoted overights from world's most ignored to most important pandemic modeler
• p90 100,000 K-12 schools in US, 50 million kids, 25 million rode 500,000 buses
• p91 kids crowd, sit 13 inches apart on bus, 3 feet in classroom. "couldn't design a system better for transmitting disease than our school system"
• p92 Targeted Layered Containment
• p93 systems fail at R₀=3 or 30% compliance
• p96 Carter Melcher writes Chapter 9 of CDC pandemic plan; disparaged by Lisa Koonin

• p101 Carter analyzes 1918 flue in Philadelphia, shows worse results due to late response . Redneck Epidemiology

• p104 people have a very hard time getting their minds around pandemics
  • 30 day penny doubling, "more than 5 million dollars" ... actually 10.74 million dollars

• p106 Crime rates fall on weekends, when kids are out of school, peaks at 330pm on weekdays, cooped up and going nuts

  • 30M kids use school lunch programs, only 2.6M during summers.