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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Can you tell me about the book you’re reading and its author?
Rick Rosner: Sure, I’m nearly halfway through a book titled ‘The Premonition’ by Michael Lewis. He’s a well-known nonfiction writer, famous for ‘Money Ball’ and ‘The Blind Side’, which inspired the Sandra Bullock movie. Lewis has a knack for finding stories that are deeply relevant to our lives and delving into them to uncover surprising elements. For instance, in ‘Money Ball’, he explores how professional baseball, for its first 120-140 years, relied heavily on intuitive decision-making by managers and scouts, many of whom were former players. The book highlights the shift towards using sabermetrics, focusing on statistics like on-base percentage to make more informed decisions. It particularly covers the Oakland A’s, a financially constrained team, and how they used statistical insights to compete effectively against wealthier teams.
Lewis also wrote ‘The Blind Side’, which, while known for its film adaptation, originally focused on the evolution of certain positions in American football and their strategic importance. Essentially, Lewis excels at uncovering and explaining the nuances of various subjects.
‘The Premonition’ deals with the formation of a pandemic response team during the end of George W. Bush’s administration, from 2005 to 2007. It was sparked by Bush reading about the 1918 pandemic and realizing the U.S. lacked a proper response plan. The book begins, interestingly, at Jefferson Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which has personal significance to my family. It narrates the story of a 14-year-old girl who, with her scientist father’s help, undertakes a science fair project in 2005 to study disease spread through social networks. The project gains traction and eventually reaches the White House, where it’s seen as insightful by some staffers and is sneakily introduced into the CDC. The CDC is portrayed as a conservative organization resistant to new ideas, but the girl’s findings help shape a multi-faceted pandemic response plan based on lessons from 1918 and computer modeling. This book offers a fascinating look at the behind-the-scenes efforts and innovations in public health policy.
In the book, it’s currently 2007, the tail end of the Bush administration. I’m anticipating that the rest of ‘The Premonition’ by Michael Lewis will cover the evolution of the pandemic plan under Obama, its improvement, and then its unfortunate dismantling under Trump, leading to the current crisis. I haven’t finished the book yet, with about 150 pages to go, but this trajectory seems likely, given the context. The concept of mitigation is crucial, especially in our current situation with widespread skepticism towards pandemic measures. Individually, these measures might not seem highly effective until a vaccine is developed, but when combined, they can be significantly impactful. This is evident from historical examples like St. Louis in 1918, which had a lower death toll compared to Philadelphia, where delayed and insufficient actions led to a high number of deaths. Cities that reopened prematurely also suffered greatly.
The story then focuses on the young girl from Albuquerque who won a National Science Fair. By the age of 16, after her work was expanded upon by the CDC and the White House, she became an obscured figure in the transition from Albuquerque to Washington D.C. and Atlanta. Despite her significant contribution to pandemic response modeling, her involvement was largely unrecognized. At a National Epidemiology High School Science Fair, her project was criticized for seemingly having too much of her father’s influence, leading her not to receive a prize. Disheartened, she decided to leave science and pursue humanities in college. It’s a poignant turn, considering her early and crucial contributions to pandemic response planning. While the CDC’s plan, influenced by her work, was adopted worldwide with varying degrees of success, the book likely concludes with a tragic recounting of how the plan was mismanaged under Trump. I’ll share more once I finish the book.
I highly recommend picking up a Michael Lewis book. He’s authored a dozen or more, all of which are excellent. He’s like Malcolm Gladwell, but with a focus less on pontificating and more on uncovering the human stories behind significant events.
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Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
License and Copyright
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.rickrosner.org.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Rick Rosner 