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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
I devoured this book like a thriller. It's fascinating and tense as it peels back the layers on the last 15-20 years of pandemic planning, the narrow miss that swine flu presented, and then, at the halfway point of the book, the main event at last arrives: COVID-19.
The book is not a story of institutions, nor is it a story of politics; it's a story of individuals. A scientist father helping his daughter with a science fair project to model community-spread infection in a way nobody had done before.
Two scientists who re-evaluate Philadelphia's and St. Louis' responses to the 1918 flu and realize that although accepted wisdom said that social-distancing had failed, the key was in the timing of the interventions.
One public health officer in California walking the tight-rope between sounding the alarm and being black-balled by her superiors.
A loosely connected group of doctors and scientists in an email group spending the first 3 months of 2020 extrapolating infection data and desperate to find someone--anyone--to do something about it.
The biochemist who organizes an entire system for free and fast COVID testing and sequencing and then struggles to find anyone to take him up on it.
All of these stories intertwine in a way that makes for a taut and page-turning narrative.
It's obviously not a story with a happy ending.
But it was satisfying in the sense that it gave me a look behind the curtain, to understanding how we got to now. If you have any interest at all in data, epidemiology, human psychology, and most of all the intriguing, genius minds that somehow exist buried within layers of institutions, you'll probably find this interesting. I know I did.
To me, one of the most frustrating things is when people (yes, myself included!) do research in their own heads--what they've heard, what they think they've heard, what they feel, and what they can or can't imagine--and then take all of those things and believe that they have a grasp on the truth of a matter. Evidently, it's part of being human to be really, really bad at risk assessment, and not to suss out real information. To most of us, what seems unthinkable simply is unthinkable. That's why it was so riveting to read about those who have spent their whole lives with the data and can face up to what it says. Unsettling, important stuff.
Content note: A lot of strong language in some quotes. Extremely medically graphic description of a postmortem tissue collection near the beginning of the book. This book will not be for everyone.
The book is not a story of institutions, nor is it a story of politics; it's a story of individuals. A scientist father helping his daughter with a science fair project to model community-spread infection in a way nobody had done before.
Two scientists who re-evaluate Philadelphia's and St. Louis' responses to the 1918 flu and realize that although accepted wisdom said that social-distancing had failed, the key was in the timing of the interventions.
One public health officer in California walking the tight-rope between sounding the alarm and being black-balled by her superiors.
A loosely connected group of doctors and scientists in an email group spending the first 3 months of 2020 extrapolating infection data and desperate to find someone--anyone--to do something about it.
The biochemist who organizes an entire system for free and fast COVID testing and sequencing and then struggles to find anyone to take him up on it.
All of these stories intertwine in a way that makes for a taut and page-turning narrative.
It's obviously not a story with a happy ending.
But it was satisfying in the sense that it gave me a look behind the curtain, to understanding how we got to now. If you have any interest at all in data, epidemiology, human psychology, and most of all the intriguing, genius minds that somehow exist buried within layers of institutions, you'll probably find this interesting. I know I did.
To me, one of the most frustrating things is when people (yes, myself included!) do research in their own heads--what they've heard, what they think they've heard, what they feel, and what they can or can't imagine--and then take all of those things and believe that they have a grasp on the truth of a matter. Evidently, it's part of being human to be really, really bad at risk assessment, and not to suss out real information. To most of us, what seems unthinkable simply is unthinkable. That's why it was so riveting to read about those who have spent their whole lives with the data and can face up to what it says. Unsettling, important stuff.
Content note: A lot of strong language in some quotes. Extremely medically graphic description of a postmortem tissue collection near the beginning of the book. This book will not be for everyone.
This was an unbelievable book! I can't believe that these stories - and these people - are real. This read more easily than any fictional thriller. Equal parts inspiring, fascinating, and maddening.
No one does storytelling through people like Michael Lewis. His ability to find people in dysfunctional systems who are doing everything they can to make it work (often to no avail) is incredible. No different here. Like many of his books, this should be a much needed wake up call to the neglect in our systems of government and how they affect people.
If you have any interest as to the why and how of the atrocious American pandemic response, this book will go a long way toward satisfying that itch and answering questions. It’s pretty much common knowledge that the White House’s response to the pandemic gets an F; however, there are many other bad actors (particularly the CDC) and hidden heroes as well. Not sure how anyone could’ve missed the events of the last year and a half but herein lies an account of what was happening behind the scenes. Excellent read.
informative
fast-paced
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
I think it reads as a narrative, which makes it easy to consume but frustrating for someone reading this for a class where we're asked to pull specific lessons out of it. Your mileage may vary
We all know how the debacle that Michael Lewis covers in this book turned out, but that doesn't make it any less riveting. This is less about the Trump administration than I (or Lewis, apparently) expected, and much more about deeper, systemic problems that derailed the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of the stories he tells were new to me, and he managed to present even the parts I was familiar with in ways that I found interesting and surprising. There's lots of backstory here; SARS CoV2 doesn't really show up until about 150 pages in, which is nice because you don't actually have to feel enraged throughout the entire book.
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
I really like Michael Lewis' books but this one isn't his best. It's an interesting subject but I found my attention wondering whenever I read and there want a point where I felt myself being grabbed by the various stories about the response to the pandemic.