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Speaker 1: M This is Mesters in Business with very Renaults on

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Speaker 1: Bluebird Radio. This week on the podcast Oh Boy, Do

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Speaker 1: I have an extra special guest. Michael Lewis, author of

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Speaker 1: such books as The Big Short, Liars, Poker, The Blindside, Flashboys,

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Speaker 1: money Ball, It just goes on and on The Undoing Project,

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Speaker 1: is here to talk about his new book. His latest book,

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Speaker 1: which is out this week, called The Premonition a Pandemic Story,

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Speaker 1: and man, let me tell you, I've plowed through this

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Speaker 1: book in two days. It's just astonishing. This is the

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Speaker 1: money Ball for epidemiology, the Big Short for how to

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Speaker 1: screw up a pandemic response. It's all of your favorite

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Speaker 1: Michael Lewis characters, the brilliant but quirky outsider, the people

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Speaker 1: who are not quite dead center of the institution but

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Speaker 1: are aware the instant tuition is collapsing. And it's just

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Speaker 1: a fascinating tale. If I haven't lived through this for

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Speaker 1: the past year, I would have read this and said

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Speaker 1: this couldn't happen, this is impossible. But having lived through it,

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Speaker 1: it's like, oh my god, I remember that, how that's

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Speaker 1: how that happened. Holy kept. The whole thing is just

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Speaker 1: astonishing every time Michael Lewis releases a new book. It's

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Speaker 1: an event and this one is no different. So with that,

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Speaker 1: I will just shut up and say my conversation with

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Speaker 1: Michael Lewis, this is Mesters in Business with very Results

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Speaker 1: on Bluebird Radio. My extra special guest this week is

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Speaker 1: Michael Lewis. He is our returning champion and I think

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Speaker 1: this is our third or fourth interview. His latest book

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Speaker 1: is Premonition, a pandemic story. Think of it as the

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Speaker 1: money Ball version of epidemiology, and it's absolutely fascinating. You

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Speaker 1: know Michael Lewis's work everything from Liars Poker to money Ball,

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Speaker 1: to The Big Short to the Undoing Project. This is

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Speaker 1: very much along the same lines and I think you

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Speaker 1: will really enjoy it. Let's jump right into this, and

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Speaker 1: I have to start Michael by asking you wrote a

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Speaker 1: series of dispatches from America in the age of COVID nineteen.

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Speaker 1: When did you recognize that, hey, you know this is

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Speaker 1: a book here, Yeah, you know, the dispatches were already

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Speaker 1: in the services of the book that I was, Um.

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Speaker 1: A couple of things happened. One was I'd written the

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Speaker 1: previous book, The Fifth Risk, which is just kind of

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Speaker 1: an argument that we're all in trouble if if the

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Speaker 1: if the administration isn't all that interested in managing the

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Speaker 1: federal government, because the federal government manages this portfolio of risks,

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Speaker 1: many of the existential risks, including the risks of the

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Speaker 1: pandemic and UM and that book sort of post question

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Speaker 1: like what happens if something really bad happens? Um and

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Speaker 1: uh and so I was sort of in a way

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Speaker 1: poised for this. It was like, what is the bad

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Speaker 1: thing going to be? And it was this Um. The

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Speaker 1: the other thing that happened very early on in the

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Speaker 1: Pandemic Um like march Um late march is I stumbled

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Speaker 1: into UM characters who clearly were book characters that they

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Speaker 1: had that they had the dimensions the breasts of of

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Speaker 1: of the best book characters I've had, and so and

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Speaker 1: the in particular UM there were you know, it sounds preposterous,

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Speaker 1: but I can't think of another way to put it,

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Speaker 1: a kind of secret group of doctors who were you know,

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Speaker 1: who had someone worked in the White House, actually most

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Speaker 1: had worked in the White House. They were placed all

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Speaker 1: over kind of the institutions that might have something to

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Speaker 1: do with pandemic was reponse who had been who had

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Speaker 1: been kind of together for about fifteen years, who were

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Speaker 1: kind of trying to shadow manage the pandemic. And one

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Speaker 1: of those characters was so interesting to me. I thought, man, man,

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Speaker 1: I don't know how I'm going to do this, but

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Speaker 1: but he he's a book. Carter Mesher was his name,

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Speaker 1: and you know he we can get into him. But

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Speaker 1: he basically invented the idea of pandemic response and um

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Speaker 1: and so so uh so I wrote some things for

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg which were on the side of of the book,

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Speaker 1: and it was a way to get me around and

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Speaker 1: out and reporting in the field and giving me, you know,

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Speaker 1: license to go ask people questions. But the book was

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Speaker 1: there first, and it took shape differently than they usually do.

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Speaker 1: You know, your question is good because normally what happens,

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Speaker 1: right is I find a bunch of magazine stuff and

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Speaker 1: it's just bills and bills and bills, and all of

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Speaker 1: a sudden, I've got a book. But in this case,

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Speaker 1: what I had was not the stuff that stuff. I

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Speaker 1: had characters, and I just thought, I'm gonna follow these

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Speaker 1: people wherever they go. And there are at least three characters,

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Speaker 1: if not more, in the book, that each of them

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Speaker 1: could be a main character in a book. We'll we'll

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Speaker 1: come back to them later. One of the things you

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Speaker 1: write about you do pick up with a fifth risk

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Speaker 1: left off and you right, hey, you know, for three years,

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Speaker 1: despite all sorts of global threats and risks and potential crises,

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Speaker 1: the Trump administration it had gotten pretty lucky. And then

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Speaker 1: suddenly their luck ran out. Tell us about that, well, um,

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Speaker 1: there wasn't anything that big to manage, and there wasn't

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Speaker 1: there They didn't need to to really be able to

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Speaker 1: understand and wheel the instruments of the federal government in

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Speaker 1: the way they would have to in a pandemic. But

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Speaker 1: but you know, you know what was ironic about this

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Speaker 1: was though I think probably going in, I thought my

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Speaker 1: book would have a lot to do with the Trump administration,

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Speaker 1: because at least used the Trump administration's transition indifference way

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Speaker 1: back when as as a hook to explain what these

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Speaker 1: instruments were inside the federal government and how important they were.

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Speaker 1: I think I would have I thought in the beginning

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Speaker 1: that Trump and the administration we're going to be really

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Speaker 1: important in this story. And I was surprised if they

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Speaker 1: kind of as you've you've read it. They kind of

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Speaker 1: fade into the background the problems. Trump ends up as

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Speaker 1: one of the as one of the characters said, is

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Speaker 1: a come morbidity. He's like another thing you died of.

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Speaker 1: But it wasn't that, it wasn't the thing that really

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Speaker 1: killed you. Uh, it was that we had we had

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Speaker 1: our problems. Our problematic response two to a pandemic was

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Speaker 1: baked into our our system and pre dated the Trump administration.

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Speaker 1: Not that they made it any better, but there were

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Speaker 1: problems leading right up to Oh up that you that

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Speaker 1: that I think at least two of my three main

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Speaker 1: characters would have predicted this was gonna be a total

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Speaker 1: mess um well before Trump because of their interaction, because

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Speaker 1: of their knowledge of the public health system, which is

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Speaker 1: in the system at all. It's you know, it's several

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Speaker 1: thousand local public health officers not really stitched together with

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Speaker 1: with with um, with plenty of legal authority, but not

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Speaker 1: a lot of social power. And and on top of it,

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Speaker 1: an institution, the CDC that has steadily become less capable

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Speaker 1: at kind of battlefield command. And we're going to come

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Speaker 1: back to the CDC because they are a major character

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Speaker 1: in this and and a major failure before we leave,

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Speaker 1: sort of the setup. I have to ask you George Bush.

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Speaker 1: George W. Bush is kind of an unlikely hero in

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Speaker 1: the book After nine eleven. He reads about he reads

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Speaker 1: a book about the pandemic and imediately recognizes, I guess

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Speaker 1: a parallel to terrorism and says, hey, we need an

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Speaker 1: early warning system for predicting emerging pathogens. Tell us a

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Speaker 1: little bit about what Bush did. Well, you have to

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Speaker 1: you have to kind of rewind the tape and imagine

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Speaker 1: the state of mind George Bush is in when he

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Speaker 1: picks up John Barry is the Great Influenza, which is

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Speaker 1: the book about pandemic. He's not only as he been

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Speaker 1: presided over nine eleven. He that Katrina has just happened. Um,

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Speaker 1: and he's got you know, it's sort of like what's

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Speaker 1: the next bad thing? And he reads about exactly how

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Speaker 1: bad it could be if a new pathogen rips through

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Speaker 1: the population. And he asked somebody what's the plan, and

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Speaker 1: the somebody says, there isn't one. There. There's there's some

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Speaker 1: narrow things, but not really a pandemic plan. And Bush

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Speaker 1: um turns, you know, there're a few of people in

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Speaker 1: the room when the conversations are having him are being had.

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Speaker 1: But there's a fairly young UM doctor who has turned

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Speaker 1: who has become more interested in public policy named Regime

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Speaker 1: than Kaya. It's kind of a great story actually, So

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Speaker 1: Regive is like the young guy in the room. And

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Speaker 1: at the end of a meeting where Bush is furious

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Speaker 1: that the the nation doesn't have a plan for a pandemic,

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Speaker 1: everybody kind of turns to Regive and says, go write

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Speaker 1: it and UM and he kind of, you know, picked

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Speaker 1: people's brains for a week and tried to figure out

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Speaker 1: what he and he ended up going back to his

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Speaker 1: parents home in Xenio, Ohio, locking himself in a basement

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Speaker 1: for two days and and writing essentially a plan for

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Speaker 1: a plan and comes back and says, what we need

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Speaker 1: to do is bring in UM people from seven or

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Speaker 1: eight federal agencies who would be involved in responding UH

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Speaker 1: and preparing for a pandemic and think about what the

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Speaker 1: plan should look like. And that's the beginning of the

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Speaker 1: creation of the plan. So he's so two, well, one

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Speaker 1: of the main characters, kind of two of the main

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Speaker 1: characters that kind of four main characters UH get pulled

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Speaker 1: into that effort and that's the beginning. And it's sort

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Speaker 1: of like they're told, and they told do lots of

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Speaker 1: things like figure out how to streamline make our vaccine

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Speaker 1: production capacities more robust, and and and figure out how

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Speaker 1: to you know, I don't know, um, prevent prevent disease

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Speaker 1: from leaping from chickens into people. Uh, you know, that

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Speaker 1: would be Department of Agriculture. They're like lots and lots

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Speaker 1: of little things. They they scheme about, but at the

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Speaker 1: center of it is this question. And the question is

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Speaker 1: what do you do with people with the population before

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Speaker 1: you have a vaccine? And that sounds like a question

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Speaker 1: that you would have thought had been answered at that point.

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Speaker 1: In fact, this is the thing that was this really

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Speaker 1: interesting to them and to me, was that they received

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Speaker 1: wisdom from the nineteen eighteen pandemic. Was that social interventions

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Speaker 1: to go by various names, non pharmaceutical interventions, social distanc thing,

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Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call it, the closing of schools and

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Speaker 1: bars and churches and all that, and keeping six feet apart.

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Speaker 1: All that was was this was it was it was

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Speaker 1: concluded that didn't work in nineteen eighteen, and so the

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Speaker 1: the elites in public health thought, do you don't do

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Speaker 1: any of that. It just doesn't work. Um, And so

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Speaker 1: they had a question on their hands, we do we

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Speaker 1: just sit around and wait until we figure out the

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Speaker 1: vaccine and and hope not too many people die. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That's the beginning of their really their investigation. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to come back to the wrong takeaways from the pandemic

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Speaker 1: and a little bit. I just have to ask you

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Speaker 1: for a follow up. So the Bush administration pandemic response,

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Speaker 1: that's three administrations ago, almost twenty years ago. What happened

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Speaker 1: with that group? Did they ever managed to get a

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Speaker 1: plan together? And what did the most recent administration do

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Speaker 1: with what they had created? It's the most remarkable story. Um.

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Speaker 1: Not only do they get a plan together, um, they do.

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Speaker 1: They perform extraordinary feats like going back and completely reinvestigating

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Speaker 1: nineteen and determining that, oh, actually the social distancing stuff

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Speaker 1: did work. They just didn't understand how it worked because

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Speaker 1: they didn't understand. For example, you know, um, Philadelphia had

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Speaker 1: death rates that were multiples of the death rates of St.

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Speaker 1: Louis at the time. The wisdom received wisdom was that

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Speaker 1: was just kind of accidental. And in fact, what it

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Speaker 1: was was that social distancing policies we were implemented in St.

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Speaker 1: Louis earlier in relation to the arrival of the virus

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Speaker 1: than they were in Philadelphia. And they go there's it's

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Speaker 1: an incredible kind of story of how they figure this

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Speaker 1: stuff out. But they write a plan, and they write

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Speaker 1: a plan without This is a couple of critical components.

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Speaker 1: This one is regiven Kaya, the young doctor who's put

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Speaker 1: in charge of sort of assembling the people to write

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Speaker 1: the plan, leaves the c d C out of it.

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Speaker 1: And he leaves the CDC out of it because already

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Speaker 1: back then there is suspicion that the c d C

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Speaker 1: is an entrenched kind of bureaucracy defending its own turf.

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Speaker 1: And and what's required here is some new kind of thinking,

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Speaker 1: and they're very invested in the old kind of thinking.

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Speaker 1: And you don't want him at the table, which tells

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Speaker 1: you something. Right, were two thousand and six, and people

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Speaker 1: are already feeling this way about the CDC. And and

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Speaker 1: so after they get they create the plan. Um, there

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Speaker 1: is the trick of selling the CDC and the entire

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Speaker 1: ablic health community on the plan, which is in itself

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Speaker 1: a story of It's a two year story of you know,

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Speaker 1: three meetings and in the end, Um Carter measher, one

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Speaker 1: of my main characters who has you know, all these

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Speaker 1: two all my characters have these superpowers. Carter superpowers invisibility,

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Speaker 1: the ability to walk into the CDC which no one does,

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Speaker 1: and write a plan for them that they then took

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Speaker 1: on as their own. And they changed the headline and

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Speaker 1: that's all they did was changed the title of it,

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Speaker 1: and that was enough to give them ownership. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: he physically kind of slips in UH and and writes

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Speaker 1: this thing with it makes them feel like they're doing it,

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Speaker 1: and they're left with the impression this was the c

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Speaker 1: d C S plan. And this this is very important

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Speaker 1: because the CDC at that moment is the world's great

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Speaker 1: health organization, public health organization, and whatever its relationship to

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Speaker 1: the American people is, it's really relationship to the rest

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Speaker 1: of the world is extremely powerful. And it goes out

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Speaker 1: in itself. This plan all over the world explains how,

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Speaker 1: for example, social distancing works and how you would implement it,

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Speaker 1: and UM and the UH and so the plan takes

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Speaker 1: root in lots of places, and it takes root in

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Speaker 1: theory in the United States. But there's this thing. Your

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Speaker 1: point is well taken. It's just three administrations ago um

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Speaker 1: Carter measure. My character, who is in the Bush White House,

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Speaker 1: is amazed when Bush leaves and Obama comes in. What

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Speaker 1: happens in the federal government as a rule, when administrations change.

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Speaker 1: They come into his office, they take all his computers,

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Speaker 1: all his hard drives, they remove all of his papers,

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Speaker 1: They take every piece of work he's done, and just

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Speaker 1: whisk it away where it goes. He never knows, And

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Speaker 1: it's like the memory of the previous administer ration is erased,

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Speaker 1: and all that's left is whatever human beings are around

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Speaker 1: and what they have in their head. And now he's

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Speaker 1: the human being who's designated to stick to hold over

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Speaker 1: from Bush to Obama. And he's only meant to stay

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Speaker 1: there for about six months in case something happens. Kind

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Speaker 1: of thing and um, and something happens. Right, there's a

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Speaker 1: faux pandemic. There's there is a pandemic, the swine flu

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Speaker 1: pandemic of two thousand and nine. But as one of

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Speaker 1: my characters puts it, it wasn't it wasn't that uh

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Speaker 1: that we dodged a bullet. If the nature shot us

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Speaker 1: with a bb gun, it was it was a lot

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Speaker 1: of people got that virus. It just wasn't as lethal

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Speaker 1: as initially got very very lucky. To the point you

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Speaker 1: just made you describe the real tragedy about government waste

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Speaker 1: is that one box. You described the government as a

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Speaker 1: series of boxes, little turfs where people have their own

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Speaker 1: knowledge and talent and expertise, and they create a culture.

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Speaker 1: And the big tragedy is that people in one box

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Speaker 1: might have the solution to a problem that's one or

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Speaker 1: two boxes over, but they never meet this no interaction,

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Speaker 1: none of the knowledge, none of the human wisdom gets

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Speaker 1: to spread throughout the government. So my story, that's true,

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Speaker 1: and my story partly dramatizes what happens if you break

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Speaker 1: down those boxes a little bit, because rage van Kaya did.

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Speaker 1: He brought these people together, hauled this doctor, you know,

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Speaker 1: out of obscurity from the Veterans administration, who proved to

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Speaker 1: be a savant in pandemics, who never would have been found.

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Speaker 1: But but once the thing, the thing is the shocking

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Speaker 1: is that we create, we invent, thanks to George W. Bush,

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Speaker 1: we invent pandemic planning. We we invent, we create the plan.

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Speaker 1: It is sort of become of the playbook from most

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Speaker 1: of the world, and we ourselves start to forget why

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Speaker 1: and we and forget what it is and forget it's important,

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Speaker 1: to forget the arguments that let everybody do agree this

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Speaker 1: is what you do. And the the Obama aministration sort

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Speaker 1: of has to learn it all over again. And they

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Speaker 1: are lucky, well, I'm smart because they kept Carter around

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Speaker 1: and Carter kind of teaches them stuff and they one

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Speaker 1: of the central lessons, uh, that they all had kind

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Speaker 1: of internalized, was that you need if you're gonna, if

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Speaker 1: you're gonna, if you're gonna face a pandemic, you have

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Speaker 1: to do it from the White House. That you can't

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Speaker 1: you can't just leave it to the CDC. That a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch of agencies involved the C. The CDC will

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Speaker 1: have its own skewed take on things. You use the CDC,

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Speaker 1: but you you run at the battlefield. Command is out

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Speaker 1: of the White House, and um, the obamaministration has to

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Speaker 1: kind of learn that all over again, uh, And Carter

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Speaker 1: sort of is part of the reason they learn it.

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Speaker 1: But but the bigger point is the way the way

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Speaker 1: our government does create things and throws throws enormous resources

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Speaker 1: into creating them and then does not preserve what's created

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Speaker 1: in the way you would wish it would. Um. And

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Speaker 1: because there is this very strange notion of a new

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Speaker 1: administration being having a clean slate or being a clean slate. Now,

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Speaker 1: smart presidents, you know, you know Obama was a smart

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Speaker 1: president at very heavily on bush and try to keep

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Speaker 1: people around. And he had a bunch of crises he

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Speaker 1: was dealing with at the time, do you remember, But

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Speaker 1: so there were reasons to keep people around. He wasn't

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Speaker 1: hostile to learning from the outgoing. But the outcoing is

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Speaker 1: still the outgoing to too great a degree. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: four thousands something people who were president presidential employee appointees

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Speaker 1: flee the place when the new administration comes in and

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Speaker 1: those people were running the place. Now, what what kind

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Speaker 1: of company like could function if every four years you

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Speaker 1: whacked off the heads of all the managers and said

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Speaker 1: we're gonna bring and some new ones and and and

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Speaker 1: the new ones. They have a choice. They can either

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Speaker 1: kind of have a conversation with the old ones that

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Speaker 1: they can just go make it up all over again.

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Speaker 1: But that's basically how we run our government. Quite fascinating.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about why people have such

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Speaker 1: a hard time getting their minds around a pandemic, including

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Speaker 1: some of the worst tragedies in American history. Why is

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Speaker 1: the human brains so bad at comprehending the way contagions spread.

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Speaker 1: We can intuit arithmetic growth, but our intuition fails when

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Speaker 1: we try and comprehend exponential growth. Why is that? Well, First,

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Speaker 1: it is an observation. That's a really important observation. And

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Speaker 1: it's the observation that is one of the observations that

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Speaker 1: is at the center of the story and at the

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Speaker 1: at the core of the thinking of the main characters.

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Speaker 1: They all realize that when you are facing a pandemic

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Speaker 1: virus that's spreading, you've got this this invisible enemy, that's

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Speaker 1: that's that's growing exponentially, and before you have signs of

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Speaker 1: it in the form of illness and then death to

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Speaker 1: just to be able to kind of take its measure,

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Speaker 1: it has. It has progressed greatly, and and you're you'll

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Speaker 1: be if you think you're looking at an arithmetic problem process,

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Speaker 1: you will be overwhelmed before you respond. And the this

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Speaker 1: is why that partly the reasons for the title of

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Speaker 1: the book. They all realized that in the beginning of

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Speaker 1: a pandemic that you have to you've got to imagine that,

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Speaker 1: you've got to look around corners, you've got it. You've

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Speaker 1: got to kind of you've got to see the thing

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Speaker 1: before it can be seen. And Carter measure, I mean,

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Speaker 1: they're always groping for for metaphors or analogies to try

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Speaker 1: to get people to understand how hard it is to

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Speaker 1: deal with a with a with a pandemic. Virus and

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Speaker 1: and fire was Carter's favorite, and the story he loved

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Speaker 1: was the story of the Norman McClean told in his

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Speaker 1: book young Men in Fire of the Man Gulf Fire,

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Speaker 1: where you have you have, you know, a dozen or

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Speaker 1: so very healthy young men walking down a gulch and

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Speaker 1: they see what looks they see a fire when they

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Speaker 1: see a fire coming at them, and they start to

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Speaker 1: run away. Um and like you know, a minute later,

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Speaker 1: they're all incinerated, and to the point where some of

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Speaker 1: them didn't even bother to drop their packs and their axes.

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Speaker 1: And they were kind of judging the movement of the

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Speaker 1: fire by how it was moving when they first saw it.

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Speaker 1: But by the time it gets them, it's moving two

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Speaker 1: or three times faster. It's spring because the fire move

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Speaker 1: grows exponentially and the virus is like that. Um. And

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Speaker 1: and it's so why is it that we don't we

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Speaker 1: have trouble with exponential processes? UM, I don't know when

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Speaker 1: we were in the savannah. How often do we see it?

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Speaker 1: You know, it's it's like one of those things that

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Speaker 1: you know it exists. We we we encounter it every

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Speaker 1: now and then. But why is it people have trouble

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Speaker 1: with compound interest you know, it's the same sort of thing, right, Uh,

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Speaker 1: people give themselves all kinds of cross wise with compound

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Speaker 1: interests because they don't understand the power of it. Um.

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Speaker 1: We don't see it often enough for it to have

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Speaker 1: an evolutionary impact on who passes along that gene or

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Speaker 1: not something like that. Maybe that's changing, but but it's

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Speaker 1: but yes, and it creates a big problem for people

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Speaker 1: who are trying to save the society because because there

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Speaker 1: the we have, the mechanisms of government are so slow grinding,

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Speaker 1: and nobody wants to The phrase that drove my characters

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Speaker 1: crazy was don't get ahead of the data, sort of

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Speaker 1: like we're gonna wait for the data. By the time

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Speaker 1: you have the data, you're dead. By the by the

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Speaker 1: time by the time you know that there are you know,

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Speaker 1: you know there there the virus is spreading internally in

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Speaker 1: the United States, and there's one death. You know that

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Speaker 1: you can go back and say, well, that one death

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Speaker 1: is a result of infection that caused that occurred a

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Speaker 1: month ago, and the virus is spreading it such and

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Speaker 1: such a rate. So you probably have like a thousand

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Speaker 1: cases a month a month ago that are multiplying exponentially.

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Speaker 1: You've already lost your ability to contain it um So

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Speaker 1: you've got to You've gotta jump out in front of that.

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Speaker 1: You've got to You've got to act before you have

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Speaker 1: visible evidence to act. Or you use the metaphor that

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Speaker 1: deaths and hospitalizations in a pandemic is like starlight. You're

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Speaker 1: looking at something that starlight could be four or hundreds

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Speaker 1: or millions of years old by the time you see it.

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Speaker 1: If you wait for that data, you're already way too late.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the current data is already lagging in a

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Speaker 1: few weeks behind correct and or it's like driving just

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Speaker 1: by looking in the rear view mirror. I mean that

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Speaker 1: it has that there is there any But the bigger

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Speaker 1: point is what is it what problem does this create

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Speaker 1: for any authority that's trying to manage the problem you?

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Speaker 1: And it's a big problem in a society that doesn't

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Speaker 1: trust the authority, because the authority is going to be

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Speaker 1: saying things for which there's no visible evidence. They're gonna

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Speaker 1: be saying, you've got to trust me. But if we

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Speaker 1: act now, we'll cut it off and be able to

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Speaker 1: contain it. But we're gonna have to do some things

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Speaker 1: before you even see, before you see the fire coming

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Speaker 1: at you, we see smoke, We know that we are

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Speaker 1: inferring because we have expertise in this subject, that that

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Speaker 1: smoke suggests this fire is going to be all over

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Speaker 1: us in you know, two weeks. But if we go

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Speaker 1: and throw water on the smoke now at some expense,

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Speaker 1: we may never see the fire. And but but who

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Speaker 1: does in which society does that work? It works in

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Speaker 1: a society where that person, that authority who's speaking is

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Speaker 1: is widely trusted. And um, that was one of our problems.

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Speaker 1: You speaking of widely trusted, you hardly reference Anthony Fauci

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Speaker 1: of the National Institute of Health, who I believe is

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Speaker 1: one of the most widely trusted people in America. How

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Speaker 1: do you tell the whole pandemic story and not bring

431
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 1: in Faucci very much. He really wasn't a key part

432
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:40,960
Speaker 1: of this story, was he He wasn't a key part

433
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 1: of my story. Great admiration for him, but it's um,

434
00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:50,479
Speaker 1: how do I put this? I think Fauci learned a

435
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 1: lot from my characters, um, rather than the reverse. So

436
00:26:56,320 --> 00:27:00,520
Speaker 1: Carter Measure the v a doctor who is at the

437
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 1: at the heart of the invention of of the pandemic

438
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:11,359
Speaker 1: plan um in early January, is writing emails to his

439
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:15,399
Speaker 1: small group of doctors and and the emails and up

440
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:20,160
Speaker 1: attracting a huge following um about what's going on in Wuhan,

441
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 1: and Carter Measure in on January has said, this is

442
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:28,119
Speaker 1: this is a you know, five alarm fire, that this

443
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:31,879
Speaker 1: is just this is the this is beyond shocking, and

444
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:34,679
Speaker 1: this is what's going to happen. And he was just

445
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 1: about dead right. And at that point Fout she was saying,

446
00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 1: there wasn't anything to worry about. Um, it was they

447
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:43,240
Speaker 1: were watching it, but it wasn't in car sting at

448
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: this point. This is when you can't be just watching it.

449
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 1: And UM, so I think that the the the expertise

450
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:59,639
Speaker 1: of responding to the pandemic was located in more in

451
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:03,280
Speaker 1: my characters than in Anthony Fauci. He was really good

452
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 1: at public communication. He's I'm sure great at what he does.

453
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 1: But my guys invented this and uh and and to

454
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 1: go one step further, wasn't just my guys. The main

455
00:28:16,119 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 1: character of the books of Woman and One, a very

456
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:24,880
Speaker 1: peculiar dimension to this whole, whole US pandemic was that

457
00:28:25,760 --> 00:28:31,320
Speaker 1: on the ground battlefield disease commanders, local public health officers

458
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: who had spent their careers fighting fighting um communicuple disease,

459
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 1: other communicauple diseases, whether it's t B or hepatitis C

460
00:28:42,160 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 1: or measles or whatever it is, some of them quite lethal. Um,

461
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:51,000
Speaker 1: we're not front and center in the pandemic response that

462
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 1: they understood like how the hand to hand combat side

463
00:28:55,200 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: of this, and in ways that even Anthony Fauci wouldn't

464
00:29:01,080 --> 00:29:04,960
Speaker 1: because he had never done that. Um. So, I mean

465
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:08,600
Speaker 1: one way. You know, it's funny your audience, who may

466
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 1: appreciate this analogy, But when I was thinking about what

467
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:15,040
Speaker 1: this what other book of mine? This is kind of

468
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:20,760
Speaker 1: like you mentioned Moneyball, But I thought, and it's the

469
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:25,280
Speaker 1: big short, because you've got this system problem, and the

470
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:27,480
Speaker 1: system has gotten so screwed up that the people who

471
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: are at the heart of the system are who seemed

472
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: to be running the system don't understand the system as

473
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: well as people who are seemed to be kind of

474
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:38,200
Speaker 1: on the fringes of the system. In this case, the

475
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:42,280
Speaker 1: people on the fringes of pandemic response or seemed to

476
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: be were the ones who actually knew what to do

477
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 1: and uh and who were able to kind of diagnose

478
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:54,320
Speaker 1: the problems of the system. And our problem was kind

479
00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 1: of the wrong people were at the center of it.

480
00:29:56,920 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: So I thought to myself, as I thought with a

481
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: big short, I don't want to really read a book

482
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 1: or write a book about the people at the heart

483
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:07,680
Speaker 1: of the system who didn't understand the system. Um. I

484
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:09,280
Speaker 1: want to write a book about the people who actually

485
00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 1: did understand the system, wherever they happened to be. And

486
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:16,320
Speaker 1: I want to a kind of assemble a cast of

487
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: characters who actually knew what was going on and can

488
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 1: describe it to the reader. And that took me, you know,

489
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 1: outside the Trump administration, outside to some extent, the federal government,

490
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 1: I mean, Carter Messers in the federal government. But he's,

491
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:35,160
Speaker 1: you know, he's basically he's he's he's working out of

492
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: his house for the v A. And the VIA doesn't

493
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:42,040
Speaker 1: even know they employ it. Um that they it's it

494
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: was very strange and disturbed it where the expertise was

495
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:48,880
Speaker 1: in the story, just like it was very strange and

496
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:53,200
Speaker 1: disturbing where the expertise was in the financial crisis, so

497
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 1: in the in the in the subprime mortgage crisis. So

498
00:30:56,920 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up the big short. You're forcing

499
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,479
Speaker 1: me to jump ahead to a question that I have

500
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:06,560
Speaker 1: to ask, and it's what's the arc type? Michael Lewis book,

501
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 1: And with all due respect to your friend Malcolm Gladwell,

502
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: I don't find biblical analogies work, um, and you know

503
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:21,560
Speaker 1: what I'm referencing. But here's how I see your arc type,

504
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:25,720
Speaker 1: and it's there's a big, important institution that at one

505
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:31,240
Speaker 1: point was a key preventer of existential disaster, and over

506
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: time it begins to calcify and starts to fail slowly,

507
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:39,600
Speaker 1: sometimes years, sometimes decades. The entrenched powers fail to see it.

508
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: They can't see the forest for the trees, and there's

509
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:46,520
Speaker 1: always this scrappy band of outsiders. They are always intelligent,

510
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 1: often quirky, sometimes misfits. They see it early, they warn

511
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: about it, sometimes to various effects. Sometimes the warnings are ignored,

512
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 1: fortunes are made in lost, lives are lost, catastrophes either

513
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: averted or not. That's my archetype, Michael Lewis book fair

514
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: or not? Well, it doesn't. You can't you describe a

515
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:10,400
Speaker 1: few of the books with that you missed the Undoing Project.

516
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:15,320
Speaker 1: You miss you capture flashboys, you capture the big short,

517
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: money ball, you don't really capture liars, poker, um, moneyball.

518
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:24,720
Speaker 1: I don't know is I guess you could argue baseball

519
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:28,360
Speaker 1: was a sclerotic enterprise, and well look how look how

520
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: money ball change baseball. It changed basketball, It's changed all

521
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: sorts of sports. And I would even argue with you,

522
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: the author, as much as I'm loath to do, that,

523
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 1: that the Undoing Project are about two outsiders from the

524
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: worlds of finance and economics who essentially turned the whole

525
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: concept of incentives on its head. It's a very fair

526
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:52,880
Speaker 1: way to look at it. So it's true, it is

527
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:57,959
Speaker 1: true that I'm attracted to that story, um and can

528
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: tell you better than anybody else does. But but the

529
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:04,520
Speaker 1: world has sort of handed me those stories too. I mean,

530
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 1: I think we're happy that we're living at it through

531
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: a time where you know, to put it very broadly,

532
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 1: the character of the entrepreneur is extremely important. The entrepreneur,

533
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 1: very broadly defined the person who is coming in and

534
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: undertaking something new from outside that's gonna turn it's going

535
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 1: to turn the system on its head, or that exposed

536
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:28,160
Speaker 1: the flaws and weaknesses in the system. So, um, there's

537
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:33,719
Speaker 1: a fluidity to especially American life, and and this is

538
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 1: this is another example of that. It's it's but when

539
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: it comes when when you find it at the level

540
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 1: of the federal government, which is the an extremely important institution.

541
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:48,520
Speaker 1: Whatever you think about it, you've got got to stop

542
00:33:48,560 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 1: and go learn about it. If if you don't understand

543
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: it's importance that that if it doesn't do the things

544
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 1: that nothing else is going to do well, if it

545
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:02,479
Speaker 1: doesn't keep a safe in the ways it's uniquely designed

546
00:34:02,520 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 1: to keep us safe, we are doomed. Um. And so

547
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: when you find the sclerosis that um, that enables the

548
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: characters that I'm drawing to to to play a role,

549
00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:23,360
Speaker 1: to to see to identify the problems, to try to

550
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:26,879
Speaker 1: fix the problems to attack it from the outside. Um

551
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:33,399
Speaker 1: that it's it's troubling. And in this case, it's what's

552
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:38,120
Speaker 1: so peculiar is that unlike the Big Short where the

553
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:42,200
Speaker 1: main characters were all people who were pretty fringey their

554
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:45,759
Speaker 1: whole careers until the financial crisis, I mean, yeah, they

555
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:47,440
Speaker 1: had little hedge funds and so on's over that they

556
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:50,319
Speaker 1: were not running gold with acts um or. They were

557
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 1: running the biggest hedge fund. And these people were were

558
00:34:56,120 --> 00:34:58,960
Speaker 1: people who were on the inside in some ways. I mean,

559
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 1: they could co literally see it was it's as if

560
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:06,040
Speaker 1: it's it's as if, um, I don't know, uh, outer

561
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:08,400
Speaker 1: ring of the bull's eye. They weren't dead center. They

562
00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: were in one of the right. That's exactly right. And

563
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:13,200
Speaker 1: and and they would have said to you, like Charity

564
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:15,320
Speaker 1: Need would have said to you, local public health officer

565
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 1: in Santa Barbara County who becomes number two in the

566
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:21,680
Speaker 1: state of California and who has the the single most

567
00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: vivid on the ground view of what is going on

568
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:27,880
Speaker 1: with communicable disease in the country. It's her little flights

569
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 1: of the country. But you can just replicated thousands of times,

570
00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 1: um that that she would say that from the moment

571
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:39,760
Speaker 1: she started that job back in whatever two thousand eleven,

572
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:43,960
Speaker 1: um that she had a better view than the c

573
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,720
Speaker 1: d C of what was going on. And it's shocked

574
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: her that she thought the CDC sort of ran things,

575
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 1: and she comes to learn that they don't really run things,

576
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:57,000
Speaker 1: and that you know, a year or two years, and

577
00:35:57,120 --> 00:35:59,799
Speaker 1: she realizes, Hell, no one's coming to save me. I

578
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:01,880
Speaker 1: am on my own. I am on my own. If

579
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 1: there's a bowl outbreak in Santa Barbara County, um that

580
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: it's it's um. So they are, UM, they are, They're

581
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:16,320
Speaker 1: not coming from that far away. These main characters quite

582
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 1: interesting observations. So one of your main characters, Carter Meechum, says, quote,

583
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:25,520
Speaker 1: I could not design a system better for transmitting disease

584
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 1: than our school system. And you go on to describe

585
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:34,760
Speaker 1: the desks, the busses, what makes schools such a vector

586
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:38,760
Speaker 1: for transmission of airborne disease. Now you gotta just stop

587
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:41,080
Speaker 1: and realize how cool it is. This guy is in

588
00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:44,319
Speaker 1: the White House. He's been told to write a pandemic plan.

589
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:49,840
Speaker 1: He has done that, and unsatisfied with the degree to

590
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:52,640
Speaker 1: which is going to save the American people, he one

591
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:57,319
Speaker 1: goes back and figures out that social distancing, closing things

592
00:36:57,320 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 1: and all the rest had huge effects back in for

593
00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:03,200
Speaker 1: the first time in history. He does this kind of

594
00:37:03,239 --> 00:37:06,960
Speaker 1: historical work and he's a doctor, he's not historian, and

595
00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: he does it with his colleague Richard Hatchett. But but

596
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:13,680
Speaker 1: and then second they get they get these very crude models,

597
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:16,280
Speaker 1: and that's a whole lot of story where the models

598
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 1: come from. And they see in some in simulations, in

599
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 1: these models of disease transmission, something really peculiar happens when

600
00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 1: you close schools. And he doesn't, you know, they don't

601
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:30,319
Speaker 1: know whether to believe the models. The models are, you know,

602
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:33,880
Speaker 1: abstractions from reality. It seems like a really smart abstraction

603
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:35,839
Speaker 1: from reality they're working with. But no one's really ever

604
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:38,879
Speaker 1: paid much attention to models for disease transmission. So they're

605
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:42,360
Speaker 1: a little they're a little skeptical. And he car asked, like,

606
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: what is it about schools? And that this guy who's

607
00:37:45,680 --> 00:37:48,440
Speaker 1: in the White House, you know, calls his wife and says,

608
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: we're going to school. I want next time they give

609
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: us an opportunity to go to one of the kids schools.

610
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:54,800
Speaker 1: I want to go with a tape measure and start

611
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:59,240
Speaker 1: looking at how these kids interact and and he starts

612
00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:03,799
Speaker 1: to measure the physical space between children and and um

613
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 1: and also observe very closely how kids interact with each

614
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:12,080
Speaker 1: other and how they don't observe space, they don't kind

615
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 1: of give each other space and the way adults do

616
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:17,320
Speaker 1: on the bus stops in the classroom in the hallways.

617
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:21,320
Speaker 1: And it's as he says, he says, you know, why

618
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 1: why are people missing? Just how how sort of built

619
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: for transmitting a communicable disease of school is uh in

620
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:33,799
Speaker 1: their thinking about what we do if there is one?

621
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:35,840
Speaker 1: And he says, it's because people forget what it was

622
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: like to be a kid. But you know, it's it's

623
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:41,239
Speaker 1: it's they designed the buses so the seats at thirty

624
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: nine inches across because they assume the hip width of

625
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: the child is thirteen inches and they can put three

626
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:48,920
Speaker 1: on a seat. I mean, he does all this research,

627
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 1: and um, it's so so the she realizes that the

628
00:38:55,239 --> 00:39:01,320
Speaker 1: closing of schools has to be an important aspect of

629
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:05,040
Speaker 1: any kind of response to Well, they're they're dealing with

630
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 1: pandemic flu, which is much more lethal in children. So

631
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:12,640
Speaker 1: but but even COVID it's it's you know, it's it's

632
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 1: I think he would say. One of the unexplored subjects

633
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:21,399
Speaker 1: in COVID is the role kids have played because they

634
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:26,080
Speaker 1: are they can get it, they can transmit it, but

635
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:29,040
Speaker 1: they don't get sick and they often don't even have symptoms,

636
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:33,600
Speaker 1: so that it's you know, you can point to a

637
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:37,280
Speaker 1: lot of anecdote eminence where the start of an outbreak

638
00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:40,520
Speaker 1: was quite likely a school and you just didn't see

639
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:42,520
Speaker 1: it at the school. You didn't see it until the

640
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:47,839
Speaker 1: kid interacted with some older person. But but it's the

641
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:51,800
Speaker 1: the just the idea that he is wandering around schools

642
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:56,920
Speaker 1: with tape measures and figuring out why this this model

643
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:01,120
Speaker 1: that was built to analyze is the transmission is saying

644
00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 1: what it's saying UM and that they they then in

645
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 1: bed in in the CDC's plan, like the minute it

646
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:11,520
Speaker 1: looks like this is a big deal. You've you got

647
00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:14,719
Speaker 1: to close the schools first and then that you know,

648
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 1: if you if you go see what happened in this pandemic,

649
00:40:17,920 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 1: go to I don't know, pick a country, Cambodia a

650
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:23,520
Speaker 1: country that contained the virus UM. But there's a bunch

651
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:25,879
Speaker 1: of countries that contained the virus. What's the first thing

652
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:29,279
Speaker 1: they did? They closed the schools it all. It goes

653
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:32,000
Speaker 1: back to Carter Measure in his tape measure in Atlanta

654
00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:35,640
Speaker 1: Public school, figuring out how kids interacted now closing word

655
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:37,600
Speaker 1: to each other. So let's talk a little bit about that.

656
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:41,719
Speaker 1: So the group of seven male doctors led by Carter

657
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: Matrium that put together pandemic plan originally for George W. Bush,

658
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:51,640
Speaker 1: they're holdings as we go through, they're holding these for

659
00:40:51,719 --> 00:40:55,240
Speaker 1: lack of the bed word conference phone calls and zoom calls,

660
00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: and more and more people start listening in from various

661
00:40:58,560 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 1: aspects of government. Says they're unofficially doing this. They're not,

662
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:05,839
Speaker 1: you know, the Trump White House didn't say go do this,

663
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 1: and that sort of spreads from county to county, state

664
00:41:11,200 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 1: to state. Eventually the White House is listening in on it.

665
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:19,640
Speaker 1: How influential is card Mitum and his bands of married

666
00:41:19,680 --> 00:41:24,400
Speaker 1: doctors that are setting policy because nobody else was. It

667
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 1: was a giant vacuum. So it was only two of

668
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:30,399
Speaker 1: the seven from the Bush White House team that ended

669
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: up becoming so obsessed that they became sort of the

670
00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:37,800
Speaker 1: pandemic guys. Richard Hatchett and Carter Mesher, and those two

671
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,320
Speaker 1: are the hub of a group of doctors in there.

672
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:45,399
Speaker 1: These doctors are are in unusual positions. Matt Hepburn is

673
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:50,320
Speaker 1: the head of vaccine development for Operation Warp Speed. UM

674
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: James Lawler runs a UM an infectious disease unit of

675
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:00,839
Speaker 1: the federal government that's in Omaha, where you're you know,

676
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: you're likely to be sent if you get if you

677
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 1: have blood coming out of your eyes, and no one

678
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:08,360
Speaker 1: knows why that. It's like for highlights for for really

679
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: really alarming cases of disease to treat and understand. So

680
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:19,080
Speaker 1: he's on the front lines there. UM Dave Marcozy, another doctor,

681
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 1: is ends up being essentially advising the governor of Maryland,

682
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:27,680
Speaker 1: Regive than Kaya, who was the doctor who assembled the

683
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:31,359
Speaker 1: original pandemic planning team in the Bush administration, who has

684
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 1: now had a big farmers it works at a big

685
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:38,840
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical in in Japan. UM has social connections with the

686
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 1: governor of Ohio. And so what happens is you can

687
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:45,720
Speaker 1: you can sort of map the US because the Trump

688
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:48,760
Speaker 1: administration basically said you're on your own to the governor's

689
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 1: UM do you're gonna do? And we we had fifty

690
00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:55,560
Speaker 1: different you know, pandemic responses, which of course is never

691
00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 1: gonna work because unless you close the borders between stats um,

692
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 1: the the you can map the the urgency with which

693
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: a state responded onto the onto the interactions that these

694
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:16,399
Speaker 1: doctors had with particular people in the states. Which one's

695
00:43:16,400 --> 00:43:20,800
Speaker 1: got it wrong. Well, the in the beginning, so it

696
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:23,800
Speaker 1: changed over time. Even in the beginning, the ones who

697
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:27,839
Speaker 1: jumped to as they should have were Maryland, Ohio and

698
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:34,040
Speaker 1: California and uh, and it was it was entirely a

699
00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:39,399
Speaker 1: result of them kind of listening to what these are

700
00:43:39,560 --> 00:43:42,200
Speaker 1: largely a result of listening to what these guys had

701
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:45,640
Speaker 1: to say about what was about to happen. Now now

702
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 1: there is there that the email change. They had a

703
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:53,640
Speaker 1: group they called themselves the Wolverines the doctors, and it's

704
00:43:53,680 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 1: kind of it was kind of a joke, but their

705
00:43:56,719 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: email change was the Red Dawn Chain and the and

706
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:02,480
Speaker 1: the Red Don Chaine. All kinds of people ended up

707
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 1: on this thing. And it's a little hard to see,

708
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 1: I mean, like in the Trump administration, what effect it

709
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: had because you had um, I don't know, Ken Cucinelli,

710
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 1: who was Deputy Homeland, I don't know what exactly. His

711
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:18,480
Speaker 1: title was, I think he was number two in Homeland security.

712
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:21,839
Speaker 1: Who is you know on conference calls with these guys

713
00:44:21,880 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 1: just listening in and um the you know. Indirectly because

714
00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:31,760
Speaker 1: of this, Charity Dean, the lead character of the book,

715
00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 1: the public health officer, who is number two in California,

716
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:39,160
Speaker 1: who's being at the time ignored by Gavin Newsom, has

717
00:44:39,200 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 1: a plan solicited from her from that goes to Jared Kushner,

718
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: and she never finds out what actually happens with this plan.

719
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: They don't actually enact it. But but the these guys

720
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:56,400
Speaker 1: were the ones who were sounding alarm bells and and

721
00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 1: people were listening to it to the extent they were listened.

722
00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: The problem was the incoherence, right that just to show

723
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:09,400
Speaker 1: you how accidental our response was. When Trump came into office,

724
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 1: his head of Homeland Security was a guy named Tom Bosser,

725
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 1: and boss was a bit of an odd character in

726
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: that he had been in the Bush administration, and for Trump,

727
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 1: mostly the Bush people and the Obama people were off

728
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: limits because it had all been rude about him, and

729
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: he didn't and he wanted just loyalists. But Bossard somehow

730
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:33,600
Speaker 1: stuck and and among the first things Tom Bosser did

731
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 1: back when Trump entered the White House was get in

732
00:45:37,239 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 1: touch with Carter Mesher and Richard Hatchett, the two guys

733
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:44,000
Speaker 1: who had cooked up the pandemic response plan, and said,

734
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:47,040
Speaker 1: if we ever have a pandemic, you guys are here,

735
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: and I almost like to badge you in now so

736
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,280
Speaker 1: we don't have to worry about that when it happens.

737
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 1: And UM flashed forward two years and John Bolton comes

738
00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 1: into the White House to uh to run to be

739
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:06,120
Speaker 1: out of national security, and he's about the first thing

740
00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 1: he does is fired Tom Bossard, And at that moment

741
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 1: the link between the Trump White House and the expertise

742
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: that could have saved us is severed. And so the

743
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:22,719
Speaker 1: expertise is just kind of rattling around the United States,

744
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 1: not organized in any way, not accessed by the government,

745
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 1: but it might have been. And if you talk to Bossard,

746
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:33,080
Speaker 1: he says, you know, this is as accidental as if

747
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 1: Bolton had not been brought in and I was still there.

748
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:38,520
Speaker 1: He says, I think he really believes. I think I

749
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: could have persuaded Trump to do the things these guys

750
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:44,480
Speaker 1: were saying to do, to be very draconian upfront, because

751
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 1: he would and he would, I would have said to

752
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:48,520
Speaker 1: him that you just fire me. If it doesn't work,

753
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:50,360
Speaker 1: blame it all on me, but you get all the credit.

754
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 1: And if it does work, and give it, give it

755
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:55,279
Speaker 1: six weeks, two months, and all of a sudden we

756
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:59,640
Speaker 1: will be a model in how in the world of

757
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:02,239
Speaker 1: how to respond to this thing, and everybody will be

758
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:05,800
Speaker 1: singing your praises. And think about that, think about that decision.

759
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:09,799
Speaker 1: You know, fair chance that if that, if Boss, it's right,

760
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:13,240
Speaker 1: and that had happened, Trump would be president. You know, uh,

761
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:16,880
Speaker 1: you know, in less than Americans would be dead, and

762
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 1: plus you get plucky president. Plus you have hundreds of

763
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:23,920
Speaker 1: thousands of Americans alive who are not alive. Uh. But

764
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:29,080
Speaker 1: that we are, that we are at the mercy of

765
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:34,240
Speaker 1: such serendipitous events is terrifying. I mean, it just speaks

766
00:47:34,280 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 1: to a badly organized society. And and the thing that,

767
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:40,239
Speaker 1: you know, the thing that attracted me did his book

768
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:44,279
Speaker 1: so much, the story My main characters are just they're superheroes.

769
00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 1: You read it, They're unbeplievable characters. They know they're each

770
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 1: one more fascinating than the next, and they want to

771
00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 1: hang with. These guys are not people who who who

772
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 1: you would have a hard time figuring out have something

773
00:47:55,800 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: special about them and and are incredibly you full And

774
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:03,640
Speaker 1: the fact that our society is so disorganized, he can't

775
00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:05,360
Speaker 1: put them in the place they need to be. That

776
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:07,160
Speaker 1: I have to come along and write a book to

777
00:48:07,239 --> 00:48:10,120
Speaker 1: put them in the place they need to be. Um,

778
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:13,400
Speaker 1: that's the problem. So, Michael, I want to discuss the

779
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:16,840
Speaker 1: failures of the CDC and the w h O, but

780
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:22,279
Speaker 1: first I have to ask you about brain eating ambas.

781
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:25,399
Speaker 1: And to get there, we have to talk about Joe

782
00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:29,200
Speaker 1: Dosy and the bio Hub. How did you go from

783
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 1: hearing about Dereci to writing about him? He's my other

784
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:37,120
Speaker 1: main character and he was it was a funny thing. Um.

785
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 1: Way back when Flashboys came out for five years ago,

786
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:44,840
Speaker 1: I had a dinner and the purpose of the dinner

787
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:48,880
Speaker 1: was to introduce me to a money manager out here

788
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 1: in California named Carl Kawaja and Car Quick. Because Carl

789
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:57,000
Speaker 1: he came with his conviction that I needed to meet

790
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:00,040
Speaker 1: this guy at u c SF, this bio chem his

791
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: named Joe Ici. He said he's he's like a character

792
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:05,279
Speaker 1: out of one of your books. And people say this

793
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:08,360
Speaker 1: to me very usually, like try to try to be polite,

794
00:49:08,719 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: but but no, I'm not really believing you. And he

795
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 1: was so insistent that I said, christ all right, I'll

796
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:18,080
Speaker 1: go out of a sandwich with him, and I went

797
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:22,440
Speaker 1: over it. At the time, he was just moving partly.

798
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 1: He was out of his office at UCSF to run

799
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:31,399
Speaker 1: this really weird institution called the Chan Zuckerberg bio Hub.

800
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:36,279
Speaker 1: It's Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg's money, um hundreds of

801
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:40,280
Speaker 1: millions of dollars gone to create this institution whose purpose

802
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 1: stated purpose is to eliminate disease by the end of

803
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:51,320
Speaker 1: the century, which seems preposterous. But Priscilla Chan had watched

804
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:54,319
Speaker 1: this guy Joe Ici lecture back when she was a

805
00:49:54,320 --> 00:49:57,239
Speaker 1: medical student, and she said, I know a guy who

806
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:03,880
Speaker 1: might actually be able to do this. And Dressy is, um,

807
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:07,759
Speaker 1: what's what's so? And it was true. When I met

808
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 1: him and had a sandwich with him, I thought, oh

809
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 1: my god, he's like the most interesting man on the planet.

810
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:19,200
Speaker 1: He does have he was. He was able to convey

811
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:23,640
Speaker 1: science two moron like me, and he was able to

812
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:25,720
Speaker 1: show me the stakes. And he was at the time

813
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:29,240
Speaker 1: setting starting to set up a system of essentially trip

814
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:36,120
Speaker 1: wires around the world where UM using genomic technology. So

815
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:41,279
Speaker 1: let me just simplify this. So if you're in if UM,

816
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:46,080
Speaker 1: a child walks into a medical clinic in Cambodia with

817
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 1: a fever and some odd symptoms, you don't just like

818
00:50:50,239 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 1: treat it like flu. You run it through one of

819
00:50:53,080 --> 00:50:57,239
Speaker 1: Joe Doici's gene machines and you see and you sequence,

820
00:50:58,120 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 1: you sequence whatever the thing is infecting the child, and

821
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:04,480
Speaker 1: you see if it's something new that has never infected

822
00:51:04,520 --> 00:51:06,920
Speaker 1: people before. That you do that in a lot of

823
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:09,440
Speaker 1: places around the planet, and you all of a sudden

824
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:13,600
Speaker 1: have kind of an early warning system for new pathogens.

825
00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: That that was what one of the one of the

826
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:18,120
Speaker 1: things he wanted to do. And he was interested in

827
00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 1: this because he was one of the early kind of

828
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 1: creators of the machinery, of the genomic machinery. The technology too.

829
00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:31,600
Speaker 1: It's kind of mind point technology. If you get sick

830
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:34,840
Speaker 1: and nobody knows what it is. UM. Joe was among

831
00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:37,600
Speaker 1: the first to say, look, hand me as DNA, just

832
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:40,440
Speaker 1: give me something out of his body. Uh, my machine

833
00:51:40,480 --> 00:51:43,560
Speaker 1: will eliminate all the stuff that's human in his body.

834
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:45,440
Speaker 1: I will know all the stuff that's supposed to be

835
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 1: there and then we'll analyze all the stuff in there

836
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be there and try to match it against

837
00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:54,720
Speaker 1: the database of every known pathogen, of the of the

838
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 1: genomes of every known pathogen that we have in the

839
00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:02,160
Speaker 1: thousands of them, and um, including braining eating ambas. But

840
00:52:02,320 --> 00:52:05,320
Speaker 1: by the way, the hospital where the poor guy died

841
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 1: from the brain eating amiba spent over a million dollars

842
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:12,520
Speaker 1: trying to cure him. Tell us what stops brain eating amoebas.

843
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: I have to go back in my book to get

844
00:52:15,719 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 1: the name of the chemis penicillin, penicilla? It was penicillin. No, no, no,

845
00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:25,560
Speaker 1: penicillin was the boy he saved the boy, the poor

846
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:30,319
Speaker 1: Chinese woman who had ballamuthia. Um, it was, it was,

847
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:33,800
Speaker 1: it was. There was something else that Are you sure

848
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: I just read this last night? You all right? I

849
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:42,600
Speaker 1: will go back and look. But I'm scrolling right now

850
00:52:42,640 --> 00:52:45,840
Speaker 1: and not saying it. Yeah. The big the bigger point

851
00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: is I could be wrong. I read it so quickly. Yes,

852
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:54,479
Speaker 1: a Chinese woman is being studied for the better part

853
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:57,000
Speaker 1: of a month and a half as their brain is

854
00:52:57,120 --> 00:53:00,120
Speaker 1: vanishing and they can't figure out what's going on in

855
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:02,600
Speaker 1: the brain. They can't even see that it's a braining amy,

856
00:53:02,640 --> 00:53:04,399
Speaker 1: but they don't know what it is. They think it's

857
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,920
Speaker 1: her immune system that's that's overreacting to something, but they

858
00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:11,120
Speaker 1: don't know what the something is, and the class gets classified,

859
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:16,520
Speaker 1: as many situations do, as unidentified encephalitis. It's just a description,

860
00:53:16,640 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 1: it's not a diagnosis. They don't know. And someone happens

861
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:23,719
Speaker 1: to know. Joe Derecy, one of the doctors that he says,

862
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:26,759
Speaker 1: give me, just give me like a sample out of

863
00:53:26,800 --> 00:53:29,040
Speaker 1: her and let me see what it is, and he

864
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:34,600
Speaker 1: identifies Baalamuthia. Balamuthia is a brain medium Amibia first, I

865
00:53:34,640 --> 00:53:38,439
Speaker 1: think identified in a man drill uh in the San

866
00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:41,920
Speaker 1: Diego Zoo back in the nineteen eighties. And it's it's

867
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:46,319
Speaker 1: sufficiently rare that it just doesn't you know, the pharmaceutical

868
00:53:46,360 --> 00:53:49,080
Speaker 1: companies have no interest in in in figuring out how

869
00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:50,839
Speaker 1: to cure it because they're just not enough people who

870
00:53:50,840 --> 00:53:54,760
Speaker 1: get it. And but and you get it. It seems

871
00:53:54,800 --> 00:53:56,719
Speaker 1: like like stuffing dirt up your nose is not a

872
00:53:56,719 --> 00:54:00,279
Speaker 1: good idea, but it's a little hard. But the case,

873
00:54:00,320 --> 00:54:04,239
Speaker 1: they've been several cases where he has been able to intercede.

874
00:54:05,239 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 1: What he did was once he figured out what it was.

875
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:11,920
Speaker 1: He set his post stocks to work on various drugs

876
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:14,560
Speaker 1: onto the things. See what you're correct. It was an

877
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:18,399
Speaker 1: existing drug that was off label. It wasn't penicillan. Yes,

878
00:54:18,480 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 1: you are correct, I'm wrong. No, what you're remembering is

879
00:54:21,120 --> 00:54:24,839
Speaker 1: another story where he happens to know a doctor who

880
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,920
Speaker 1: in who's in Wisconsin. Who happens the doctor happens to

881
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:30,319
Speaker 1: know him, who's got a seventeen or eighteen year old

882
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:34,000
Speaker 1: boy who is, as they say, swirling the drain. He's

883
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:36,680
Speaker 1: about to die and they can't figure out what's wrong

884
00:54:36,719 --> 00:54:42,560
Speaker 1: with him and um, and they send him a sample

885
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 1: of from of his d n A of which inside

886
00:54:47,719 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 1: him to Joe, and Joe figures out what it is,

887
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:53,480
Speaker 1: and penicillin cures that, and the boy two weeks later

888
00:54:53,520 --> 00:54:55,440
Speaker 1: walks out and sends Joe on video saying thanks for

889
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:58,960
Speaker 1: David my life. That's right. But here's the Here's there

890
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:02,680
Speaker 1: is a larger here that mirrors the pandemic response, And

891
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:07,400
Speaker 1: the larger point is that Joe, he's he's this little

892
00:55:07,480 --> 00:55:12,000
Speaker 1: lab all by himself in his post docs figuring out

893
00:55:12,640 --> 00:55:16,200
Speaker 1: both what ails people and how to cure it. And

894
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: there's no mechanism to get that out to the broader

895
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:23,520
Speaker 1: medical system. As he says, like there's one woman in

896
00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 1: her spare time at the f d A who is

897
00:55:26,200 --> 00:55:29,279
Speaker 1: trying to keep track of the academic literature and and

898
00:55:29,320 --> 00:55:33,560
Speaker 1: curated but it's insufficient. So so so it's like the

899
00:55:33,640 --> 00:55:35,239
Speaker 1: left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

900
00:55:35,320 --> 00:55:41,120
Speaker 1: We have this unbelievably sophisticated medical industrial research complex that

901
00:55:41,239 --> 00:55:45,960
Speaker 1: is generating new infragmation, new knowledge, but it's not actually

902
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:48,520
Speaker 1: getting into the hands of the people who need it

903
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:52,160
Speaker 1: when they need it. And it's like an organizational problem.

904
00:55:52,239 --> 00:55:58,680
Speaker 1: And it it explains you know why UM way before

905
00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:00,840
Speaker 1: the pending, way, before the pandemic, middle of two thousand

906
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:06,040
Speaker 1: and nineteen, UM there was a study done by an

907
00:56:06,160 --> 00:56:08,880
Speaker 1: enterprise called the Nuclear Threat Initiative where they brought together

908
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:11,600
Speaker 1: like hundreds of experts to try to to to to

909
00:56:11,719 --> 00:56:14,480
Speaker 1: do a sort of a league table a college football

910
00:56:14,520 --> 00:56:18,040
Speaker 1: ranking of who is best prepared for a pandemic and

911
00:56:18,080 --> 00:56:20,799
Speaker 1: they ranked number of the United States number one. And

912
00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:22,680
Speaker 1: they did it because we have people like Joe Ici

913
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:26,400
Speaker 1: here that we have all this, we have all this

914
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:33,440
Speaker 1: potentially sophisticated response to disease that the market and the

915
00:56:33,680 --> 00:56:38,040
Speaker 1: and the and the government is not organizing properly. This

916
00:56:38,120 --> 00:56:41,560
Speaker 1: is like life and death stuff, right. You specifically point

917
00:56:41,600 --> 00:56:46,319
Speaker 1: out um incentives inside the medical industrial complex or such

918
00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:49,759
Speaker 1: that corporations are only interested in what makes money, academia

919
00:56:49,840 --> 00:56:53,279
Speaker 1: is only interested in publishing research, and in between is

920
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:58,839
Speaker 1: where people live and die. But the system fails, correct

921
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:04,320
Speaker 1: it does. It's very well put Joe and Joodici sits

922
00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:07,760
Speaker 1: there in a position to watch this happen and lots

923
00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:10,920
Speaker 1: of little instances, just like Charity Deane sits there in

924
00:57:10,960 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 1: a position to watch disease spread in the community without

925
00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:17,000
Speaker 1: anybody but her able to stop it, in lots of

926
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:20,680
Speaker 1: little instances, and they're able in their minds to sort

927
00:57:20,720 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 1: of extraplane think, well, you know, if this happens in

928
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:25,760
Speaker 1: a little instance, what's going to happen if there's a

929
00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:29,240
Speaker 1: big instance. And they both live through the big instance

930
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:31,360
Speaker 1: in the pandemic, and they realized that everything they saw

931
00:57:31,480 --> 00:57:33,800
Speaker 1: leading up to it was it was a premonition. It

932
00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:37,040
Speaker 1: was a hint of how we were going to fail

933
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:41,400
Speaker 1: when we were struck by by the big one. So

934
00:57:41,520 --> 00:57:44,560
Speaker 1: let's triangulate on those three characters. Carter Mechum is the

935
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:50,040
Speaker 1: card Measure. Carter Carter Measure is the thirty thousand foot

936
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 1: philosopher looking down at everything and figuring all sorts of

937
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:59,360
Speaker 1: stuff out. Joe Doreesi, he is doing this incredible genomics research,

938
00:57:59,480 --> 00:58:02,920
Speaker 1: figuring out whether it's sharks that are going crazy or

939
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:07,480
Speaker 1: all these obscure, tiny diseases that industry is no incentive

940
00:58:07,880 --> 00:58:10,720
Speaker 1: to cure because it's so small. He's he's got the

941
00:58:10,760 --> 00:58:15,360
Speaker 1: red hotline that people call, and then Charity Dean is

942
00:58:15,400 --> 00:58:19,920
Speaker 1: on the front lines actually dealing with this. Are those

943
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:24,320
Speaker 1: really the three mean points, the three main characters of

944
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:27,160
Speaker 1: the book. Yes, you can think of him as if

945
00:58:27,200 --> 00:58:29,160
Speaker 1: you think of it as a James Bond movie, Charity

946
00:58:29,200 --> 00:58:32,760
Speaker 1: Dean is James Bond. Uh. Joe does is cute. He's

947
00:58:32,840 --> 00:58:35,840
Speaker 1: he's supplying all the kind of new weaponry how you

948
00:58:35,880 --> 00:58:39,120
Speaker 1: fight a virus and how you track a virus. And

949
00:58:39,120 --> 00:58:41,280
Speaker 1: you can think of Carter is um he has the

950
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:45,360
Speaker 1: plans like this is the mission and h but but

951
00:58:45,760 --> 00:58:48,680
Speaker 1: they are they're the different. There are three stools to

952
00:58:48,840 --> 00:58:53,200
Speaker 1: pandemic response. It's like big strategy, which is what Carter

953
00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:57,800
Speaker 1: Mescher and Richard Hatchett dreamed up. It's it's like developing

954
00:58:57,800 --> 00:59:01,800
Speaker 1: new tools, new weapons. Uh, to stay ahead of the virus.

955
00:59:01,800 --> 00:59:04,160
Speaker 1: And that's what Joe DOORESI does. And the big thing,

956
00:59:04,600 --> 00:59:07,000
Speaker 1: the thing that it just gives been completely lost in

957
00:59:07,040 --> 00:59:10,520
Speaker 1: our response is the on the ground, on the ground,

958
00:59:10,520 --> 00:59:14,320
Speaker 1: hand to hand combat because disease has fought locally. That

959
00:59:14,680 --> 00:59:19,880
Speaker 1: it is. It's thousands of county health officers making their

960
00:59:19,920 --> 00:59:25,080
Speaker 1: counties safe. Uh, spotting the outbreak early, getting out in

961
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:28,400
Speaker 1: front of it, stopping it from inspecting other people. So

962
00:59:28,440 --> 00:59:30,720
Speaker 1: I only have you for a minute or two left.

963
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:34,880
Speaker 1: What does the United States need to do to not

964
00:59:35,360 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 1: be the counter factual bad example for the rest of

965
00:59:38,160 --> 00:59:41,080
Speaker 1: the world. What do we need to do to prevent

966
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 1: the next pandemic from being as bad as this one?

967
00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:47,680
Speaker 1: We need to create a public health system. We don't

968
00:59:47,720 --> 00:59:49,920
Speaker 1: have one. We pretend like we have one. It's not

969
00:59:50,000 --> 00:59:53,040
Speaker 1: a system. Uh. So more broadly, we need to learn

970
00:59:53,040 --> 00:59:56,920
Speaker 1: how to govern ourselves. Uh. It's childish, but the but

971
00:59:57,120 --> 01:00:03,280
Speaker 1: the the Specifically, you need to wire together the three

972
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:06,960
Speaker 1: thousand public health officers in a network where they have

973
01:00:07,080 --> 01:00:10,960
Speaker 1: each other's information, where the network can respond as a

974
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:15,280
Speaker 1: whole to any one instance of anything happening, so they

975
01:00:15,320 --> 01:00:18,640
Speaker 1: all know that, Oh my god, this new passage and

976
01:00:18,760 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 1: just arrived in you know, Dallas or in Atlanta. Everybody

977
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:25,520
Speaker 1: be on alert for this thing and that and that.

978
01:00:25,680 --> 01:00:30,560
Speaker 1: In this network, information spreads not only bubbles up instantly

979
01:00:30,960 --> 01:00:34,880
Speaker 1: like from the ground, but spreads down instantly from the top,

980
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:38,560
Speaker 1: so they know how to deal with what's happening. Um.

981
01:00:38,640 --> 01:00:41,240
Speaker 1: Now there's a cultural thing that has to happen. And

982
01:00:41,280 --> 01:00:44,800
Speaker 1: the cultural thing is the country needs to understand the

983
01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:48,000
Speaker 1: importance of these characters, like their social status needs to

984
01:00:48,040 --> 01:00:51,120
Speaker 1: be higher, their social power needs to be higher. I mean,

985
01:00:51,160 --> 01:00:53,440
Speaker 1: if if you ask me what one of the points

986
01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:54,840
Speaker 1: of my book is, I mean the point of the

987
01:00:54,840 --> 01:00:57,520
Speaker 1: book is to say, you need to understand how important

988
01:00:57,600 --> 01:01:00,920
Speaker 1: Charity Dean is. You missed it. Uh, Uh, you missed it,

989
01:01:00,960 --> 01:01:02,840
Speaker 1: just like you missed Downport Michael Burry. What's in the

990
01:01:02,840 --> 01:01:07,040
Speaker 1: big short that you It's this character who knows how

991
01:01:07,080 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 1: to save our lives and um, so you know, I

992
01:01:12,120 --> 01:01:15,360
Speaker 1: think if you create the network, if you create the system,

993
01:01:15,440 --> 01:01:19,200
Speaker 1: you'll also start to solve the problems of social power

994
01:01:19,200 --> 01:01:23,200
Speaker 1: and social status. But but it's a it's a system

995
01:01:23,200 --> 01:01:25,520
Speaker 1: that needs to be built that we don't have. Huh.

996
01:01:26,040 --> 01:01:29,240
Speaker 1: Thanks Mike for being so generous with your time. We

997
01:01:29,280 --> 01:01:32,000
Speaker 1: have been speaking with author and Michael Lewis about his

998
01:01:32,040 --> 01:01:36,200
Speaker 1: newest book, The Premonition, A Pandemic Story. If you would

999
01:01:36,240 --> 01:01:39,080
Speaker 1: like to check out any of our previous four hundred

1000
01:01:39,120 --> 01:01:43,160
Speaker 1: such conversations, you can find them wherever you feed your podcast,

1001
01:01:43,200 --> 01:01:48,280
Speaker 1: fix iTunes, Spotify, Bloomberg dot com, wherever we love your comments,

1002
01:01:48,320 --> 01:01:52,960
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast

1003
01:01:52,960 --> 01:01:56,360
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Give us a review at Apple iTunes.

1004
01:01:56,600 --> 01:01:59,200
Speaker 1: You can sign up from my Daily reads at results

1005
01:01:59,240 --> 01:02:02,640
Speaker 1: dot com. Check out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot

1006
01:02:02,680 --> 01:02:07,120
Speaker 1: com slash Opinion. Follow me on Twitter at Rioult's I

1007
01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:09,200
Speaker 1: would be remiss if I did not think our crack

1008
01:02:09,280 --> 01:02:13,000
Speaker 1: team who helps put these conversations together each and every week.

1009
01:02:13,600 --> 01:02:17,160
Speaker 1: Tim Harrow is my audio engineer. Attika Valbran is my

1010
01:02:17,280 --> 01:02:20,920
Speaker 1: project manager. Michael Batnick is my head of research. Michael

1011
01:02:20,960 --> 01:02:25,280
Speaker 1: Boyle is my producer. I'm Barry Remolts. You've been listening

1012
01:02:25,320 --> 01:02:28,280
Speaker 1: to mascut Business on Bloomberg regular