The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

New York Instances Bestseller

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

Thankfully, we’re nonetheless a nation of skeptics. Thankfully, there are these amongst us who examine pandemics and are prepared to look unflinchingly at worst-case eventualities. Michael Lewis’s taut and sensible nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries in opposition to 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. A neighborhood 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 staff of dissenting docs, nicknamed the Wolverines, has every thing essential to struggle the pandemic: sensible backgrounds, world-class labs, prior expertise with the pandemic scares of chook flu and swine flu…every thing, that’s, besides official permission to implement their work.

Michael Lewis just isn’t shy about calling these folks heroes for his or her refusal to comply with directives that they know to be based mostly on misinformation and dangerous science. Even the web, as essential as it’s to their change of concepts, poses a danger to them. They by no means know for certain who else is likely to be listening in.