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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
4.5 for me. I bought this for my husband, but then had to read it myself. I really like his writing style and story-telling. For better or worse, it left me wanting more!
Talk about eye-opening. I think Michael Lewis is an incredible storyteller, but the way he can personalize the dysfunction of our health care system and governing bodies is astounding. Sometimes one needs to see things at a micro level to fully grasp the macro. The biggest question I was left with after reading this is “Has anything changed since or is the system truly broken and we’ve become a failed state that can’t provide for its citizens. This book should be required reading for anyone in a civil service job, from local officials up to the President.
Although I'm saturated with Covid information, I still found this book exciting and insightful.
It introduces us to many of the key people responsible for early identification of the virus, some of the quite heroes who did the difficult work of pointing out we were in trouble at a time when the Admnistration was downplaying the gravity of the situation. We learn about the dedicated people who were involved in pandemic response planning early on.
It also gives us a good glimpse at how broken the health care system is in the US, both at the Federal and State levels, making it almost impossible to have a coordinated response to the virus.
Finally, it shows us how the CDC has become politicized and gun shy after it experienced failure during the Swine Flu epidemic, leading to overreliance on vaccination as the primary tool to fight pandemics.
It introduces us to many of the key people responsible for early identification of the virus, some of the quite heroes who did the difficult work of pointing out we were in trouble at a time when the Admnistration was downplaying the gravity of the situation. We learn about the dedicated people who were involved in pandemic response planning early on.
It also gives us a good glimpse at how broken the health care system is in the US, both at the Federal and State levels, making it almost impossible to have a coordinated response to the virus.
Finally, it shows us how the CDC has become politicized and gun shy after it experienced failure during the Swine Flu epidemic, leading to overreliance on vaccination as the primary tool to fight pandemics.
challenging
informative
fast-paced
Previously I thought I understood some things about public health. I was quite wrong.
Officially, my least favorite Michael Lewis book.
It's not bad, it's just not what I expected, which is to say, I wanted more on the coronavirus from the start. I really wanted the story on the origin of the virus and the early days of the outbreak in China. There's a lot of build-up and dramatization in the form of side stories and details regarding lack of supplies and who talked to who when, etc...
In short, not enough depth on the bits that are interesting to me. There's a lot of breadth in terms of the group of infectious disease experts you never heard about and their war stories, but I didn't find it that exciting.
I don't think I'd recommend it to a friend. YMMV.
It's not bad, it's just not what I expected, which is to say, I wanted more on the coronavirus from the start. I really wanted the story on the origin of the virus and the early days of the outbreak in China. There's a lot of build-up and dramatization in the form of side stories and details regarding lack of supplies and who talked to who when, etc...
In short, not enough depth on the bits that are interesting to me. There's a lot of breadth in terms of the group of infectious disease experts you never heard about and their war stories, but I didn't find it that exciting.
I don't think I'd recommend it to a friend. YMMV.
Lays the ground work to understanding just what happened in the States during the pandemic and it’s pretty alarming.
A must read for those who do not want to wait to fall victim to the next pandemic.
This book should be read by everyone in the bureaucracies that are destroying our country.
This book should be read by everyone in the bureaucracies that are destroying our country.
A dark morality tale wrapped in Lewis's trademark cheery gee-whiz prose. It's only too timely as we sit around pretending that the COVID pandemic is over... and it doesn't give the reader a lot of confidence that this will be the last or worst pandemic of our lifetimes.
The players here are experts in public health, mostly trained as doctors but now working as hospital administrators, local health officers, and advisors to the White House. Surprisingly, most of the "action" happens years before COVID -- with the SARS and swine flu outbreaks, which most Americans didn't even really pay attention to. But a few eccentrics who called themselves the Wolverines (Red Dawn, not Michigan) started to self-organize around -- of all things -- computer models of epidemics.
I'm a programmer myself, and I work with a lot of "data-driven" people -- so it was a total shock to learn that how recently computer models were completely ignored by the CDC and the rest of America's "official" epidemiology apparatus. Believe it or not, the computer model at the center of this book was originally a middle-school student's science fair project!!! And it was for a long time! She didn't even win the science fair!!
The reason the grand poobahs of public health didn't buy into computer models was that they have "too many assumptions" built into them. The author points out that the experts had even more assumptions -- but they kept them mostly locked in their heads, rather than transparently showing and adjusting their algorithms. But also, the CDC -- as we all now know after three years of COVID -- is as isolated and siloed as any organization in the US government. And despite its fabled scientific halo, it has apparently developed a culture based on political risk-aversion and learned helplessness. Although Lewis doesn't bang on this point overly hard, it's also true that public health in the USA had largely come to be associated with the "war" against obesity and the chronic diseases associated with it, rather than the heroic era of the germ theory of disease. You'll likely be shocked at some point in this book by how flimsy the evidence was upon which the CDC acted... or more frequently made excuses about why they didn't need to act. Turns out they didn't even have good data on the 1918 flu pandemic!!!
It's not a spoiler because you learn about it in the first chapter of the book, but it turns out that a single factor probably accounts for a LOT of why America can't have nice things in public health -- and that single factor is closing schools. From Day One the Wolverines' computer model found again and again that children have a lot more social contacts than we had assumed... and therefore they are the most critical part of the population for epidemics. However, because they rarely actually fell ill with COVID -- and due to our shitty childcare infrastructure which put enormous pressures on American mothers -- a lot of Americans simply could not stomach the two interventions (closing schools and vaccinations) which would have potentially made the biggest differences in controlling COVID.
In the end, a surprisingly small part of this story is about COVID. The author isn't interested in recounting every beat of the pandemic saga in America, and it's probably too fresh for us to get perspective on it anyway. But it's deeply unsettling to realize that the Wolverines were almost the only people in America who truly grasped that a million Americans would probably die from COVID -- and they also aren't super sanguine about what will happen the next time we get an even worse pandemic.
The players here are experts in public health, mostly trained as doctors but now working as hospital administrators, local health officers, and advisors to the White House. Surprisingly, most of the "action" happens years before COVID -- with the SARS and swine flu outbreaks, which most Americans didn't even really pay attention to. But a few eccentrics who called themselves the Wolverines (Red Dawn, not Michigan) started to self-organize around -- of all things -- computer models of epidemics.
I'm a programmer myself, and I work with a lot of "data-driven" people -- so it was a total shock to learn that how recently computer models were completely ignored by the CDC and the rest of America's "official" epidemiology apparatus. Believe it or not, the computer model at the center of this book was originally a middle-school student's science fair project!!! And it was for a long time! She didn't even win the science fair!!
The reason the grand poobahs of public health didn't buy into computer models was that they have "too many assumptions" built into them. The author points out that the experts had even more assumptions -- but they kept them mostly locked in their heads, rather than transparently showing and adjusting their algorithms. But also, the CDC -- as we all now know after three years of COVID -- is as isolated and siloed as any organization in the US government. And despite its fabled scientific halo, it has apparently developed a culture based on political risk-aversion and learned helplessness. Although Lewis doesn't bang on this point overly hard, it's also true that public health in the USA had largely come to be associated with the "war" against obesity and the chronic diseases associated with it, rather than the heroic era of the germ theory of disease. You'll likely be shocked at some point in this book by how flimsy the evidence was upon which the CDC acted... or more frequently made excuses about why they didn't need to act. Turns out they didn't even have good data on the 1918 flu pandemic!!!
It's not a spoiler because you learn about it in the first chapter of the book, but it turns out that a single factor probably accounts for a LOT of why America can't have nice things in public health -- and that single factor is closing schools. From Day One the Wolverines' computer model found again and again that children have a lot more social contacts than we had assumed... and therefore they are the most critical part of the population for epidemics. However, because they rarely actually fell ill with COVID -- and due to our shitty childcare infrastructure which put enormous pressures on American mothers -- a lot of Americans simply could not stomach the two interventions (closing schools and vaccinations) which would have potentially made the biggest differences in controlling COVID.
In the end, a surprisingly small part of this story is about COVID. The author isn't interested in recounting every beat of the pandemic saga in America, and it's probably too fresh for us to get perspective on it anyway. But it's deeply unsettling to realize that the Wolverines were almost the only people in America who truly grasped that a million Americans would probably die from COVID -- and they also aren't super sanguine about what will happen the next time we get an even worse pandemic.
The book isn't as much about covid as it is about explaining just how big the cracks are in the bureaucratic institutions that make up the united failed states of America. It's a collection of stories from extraordinary people who have experienced the erosion first-hand.
Why is this? Well, America has a neverending love for self-dealing crybabies, and strong tendencies to crucify those who appeal to facts and reason. In the case of the botched covid response, it begun with Reagan and culminated with Trump.
God bless muhmerica, and godspeed
Why is this? Well, America has a neverending love for self-dealing crybabies, and strong tendencies to crucify those who appeal to facts and reason. In the case of the botched covid response, it begun with Reagan and culminated with Trump.
God bless muhmerica, and godspeed