WEBVTT - Michael Lewis on White House Pandemic Planning (Podcast) 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:06.080 M This is Mesters in Business with very Renaults on 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:10.840 Bluebird Radio. This week on the podcast Oh Boy, Do 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:14.600 I have an extra special guest. Michael Lewis, author of 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:20.239 such books as The Big Short, Liars, Poker, The Blindside, Flashboys, 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.959 money Ball, It just goes on and on The Undoing Project, 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:28.280 is here to talk about his new book. His latest book, 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:33.720 which is out this week, called The Premonition a Pandemic Story, 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:37.080 and man, let me tell you, I've plowed through this 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:43.120 book in two days. It's just astonishing. This is the 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:47.159 money Ball for epidemiology, the Big Short for how to 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:50.680 screw up a pandemic response. It's all of your favorite 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:55.040 Michael Lewis characters, the brilliant but quirky outsider, the people 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:58.440 who are not quite dead center of the institution but 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:02.279 are aware the instant tuition is collapsing. And it's just 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.959 a fascinating tale. If I haven't lived through this for 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:08.560 the past year, I would have read this and said 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.440 this couldn't happen, this is impossible. But having lived through it, 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:15.320 it's like, oh my god, I remember that, how that's 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:18.520 how that happened. Holy kept. The whole thing is just 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:23.160 astonishing every time Michael Lewis releases a new book. It's 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.960 an event and this one is no different. So with that, 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:30.759 I will just shut up and say my conversation with 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:36.959 Michael Lewis, this is Mesters in Business with very Results 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:42.640 on Bluebird Radio. My extra special guest this week is 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:46.039 Michael Lewis. He is our returning champion and I think 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:49.800 this is our third or fourth interview. His latest book 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:54.280 is Premonition, a pandemic story. Think of it as the 0:01:54.400 --> 0:02:00.560 money Ball version of epidemiology, and it's absolutely fascinating. You 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:04.760 know Michael Lewis's work everything from Liars Poker to money Ball, 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:08.160 to The Big Short to the Undoing Project. This is 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.440 very much along the same lines and I think you 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.440 will really enjoy it. Let's jump right into this, and 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.919 I have to start Michael by asking you wrote a 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:23.720 series of dispatches from America in the age of COVID nineteen. 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.280 When did you recognize that, hey, you know this is 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:31.200 a book here, Yeah, you know, the dispatches were already 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:35.120 in the services of the book that I was, Um. 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:39.360 A couple of things happened. One was I'd written the 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:41.799 previous book, The Fifth Risk, which is just kind of 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:45.600 an argument that we're all in trouble if if the 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:48.760 if the administration isn't all that interested in managing the 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:52.840 federal government, because the federal government manages this portfolio of risks, 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.720 many of the existential risks, including the risks of the 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:59.680 pandemic and UM and that book sort of post question 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:04.639 like what happens if something really bad happens? Um and 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.040 uh and so I was sort of in a way 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:10.040 poised for this. It was like, what is the bad 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:14.000 thing going to be? And it was this Um. The 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.720 the other thing that happened very early on in the 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:23.440 Pandemic Um like march Um late march is I stumbled 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:29.840 into UM characters who clearly were book characters that they 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:34.560 had that they had the dimensions the breasts of of 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:38.240 of the best book characters I've had, and so and 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:45.040 the in particular UM there were you know, it sounds preposterous, 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:46.720 but I can't think of another way to put it, 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.080 a kind of secret group of doctors who were you know, 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:52.960 who had someone worked in the White House, actually most 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:54.800 had worked in the White House. They were placed all 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:59.000 over kind of the institutions that might have something to 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.040 do with pandemic was reponse who had been who had 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.280 been kind of together for about fifteen years, who were 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:08.360 kind of trying to shadow manage the pandemic. And one 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.480 of those characters was so interesting to me. I thought, man, man, 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:13.640 I don't know how I'm going to do this, but 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:17.800 but he he's a book. Carter Mesher was his name, 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.039 and you know he we can get into him. But 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:25.680 he basically invented the idea of pandemic response and um 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.200 and so so uh so I wrote some things for 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:34.080 Bloomberg which were on the side of of the book, 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:35.719 and it was a way to get me around and 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:39.200 out and reporting in the field and giving me, you know, 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:42.240 license to go ask people questions. But the book was 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:48.560 there first, and it took shape differently than they usually do. 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:51.039 You know, your question is good because normally what happens, 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.200 right is I find a bunch of magazine stuff and 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:54.840 it's just bills and bills and bills, and all of 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:57.040 a sudden, I've got a book. But in this case, 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:59.760 what I had was not the stuff that stuff. I 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:02.880 had characters, and I just thought, I'm gonna follow these 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.479 people wherever they go. And there are at least three characters, 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.039 if not more, in the book, that each of them 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:11.200 could be a main character in a book. We'll we'll 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:14.320 come back to them later. One of the things you 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:17.760 write about you do pick up with a fifth risk 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:21.440 left off and you right, hey, you know, for three years, 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:26.479 despite all sorts of global threats and risks and potential crises, 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:30.080 the Trump administration it had gotten pretty lucky. And then 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:35.080 suddenly their luck ran out. Tell us about that, well, um, 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:39.080 there wasn't anything that big to manage, and there wasn't 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:43.280 there They didn't need to to really be able to 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:47.960 understand and wheel the instruments of the federal government in 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:51.400 the way they would have to in a pandemic. But 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.080 but you know, you know what was ironic about this 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:58.279 was though I think probably going in, I thought my 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:01.000 book would have a lot to do with the Trump administration, 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:08.440 because at least used the Trump administration's transition indifference way 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:12.680 back when as as a hook to explain what these 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:15.800 instruments were inside the federal government and how important they were. 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:18.080 I think I would have I thought in the beginning 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:21.760 that Trump and the administration we're going to be really 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:25.520 important in this story. And I was surprised if they 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:28.159 kind of as you've you've read it. They kind of 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.280 fade into the background the problems. Trump ends up as 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:33.000 one of the as one of the characters said, is 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:36.080 a come morbidity. He's like another thing you died of. 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:38.279 But it wasn't that, it wasn't the thing that really 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:42.000 killed you. Uh, it was that we had we had 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:48.000 our problems. Our problematic response two to a pandemic was 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:52.720 baked into our our system and pre dated the Trump administration. 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:55.960 Not that they made it any better, but there were 0:06:56.040 --> 0:07:02.160 problems leading right up to Oh up that you that 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:05.839 that I think at least two of my three main 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:09.920 characters would have predicted this was gonna be a total 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:15.200 mess um well before Trump because of their interaction, because 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:17.320 of their knowledge of the public health system, which is 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:19.600 in the system at all. It's you know, it's several 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:24.800 thousand local public health officers not really stitched together with 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:29.240 with with um, with plenty of legal authority, but not 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:32.240 a lot of social power. And and on top of it, 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:37.880 an institution, the CDC that has steadily become less capable 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:40.960 at kind of battlefield command. And we're going to come 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:43.880 back to the CDC because they are a major character 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.720 in this and and a major failure before we leave, 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:51.320 sort of the setup. I have to ask you George Bush. 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:53.920 George W. Bush is kind of an unlikely hero in 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:57.160 the book After nine eleven. He reads about he reads 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:01.880 a book about the pandemic and imediately recognizes, I guess 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:04.800 a parallel to terrorism and says, hey, we need an 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:09.440 early warning system for predicting emerging pathogens. Tell us a 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:11.640 little bit about what Bush did. Well, you have to 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.480 you have to kind of rewind the tape and imagine 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:17.760 the state of mind George Bush is in when he 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:20.320 picks up John Barry is the Great Influenza, which is 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:26.320 the book about pandemic. He's not only as he been 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:31.480 presided over nine eleven. He that Katrina has just happened. Um, 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.120 and he's got you know, it's sort of like what's 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:39.160 the next bad thing? And he reads about exactly how 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:43.079 bad it could be if a new pathogen rips through 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:46.760 the population. And he asked somebody what's the plan, and 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:51.800 the somebody says, there isn't one. There. There's there's some 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:56.439 narrow things, but not really a pandemic plan. And Bush 0:08:56.679 --> 0:09:00.440 um turns, you know, there're a few of people in 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.160 the room when the conversations are having him are being had. 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:08.240 But there's a fairly young UM doctor who has turned 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.320 who has become more interested in public policy named Regime 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:14.920 than Kaya. It's kind of a great story actually, So 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:18.319 Regive is like the young guy in the room. And 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:22.360 at the end of a meeting where Bush is furious 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:25.599 that the the nation doesn't have a plan for a pandemic, 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:29.360 everybody kind of turns to Regive and says, go write 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:33.319 it and UM and he kind of, you know, picked 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:35.959 people's brains for a week and tried to figure out 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:37.720 what he and he ended up going back to his 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:40.679 parents home in Xenio, Ohio, locking himself in a basement 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:45.160 for two days and and writing essentially a plan for 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:48.199 a plan and comes back and says, what we need 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:52.800 to do is bring in UM people from seven or 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.960 eight federal agencies who would be involved in responding UH 0:09:57.000 --> 0:10:00.400 and preparing for a pandemic and think about what the 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.120 plan should look like. And that's the beginning of the 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:07.320 creation of the plan. So he's so two, well, one 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:09.920 of the main characters, kind of two of the main 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:13.400 characters that kind of four main characters UH get pulled 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:15.840 into that effort and that's the beginning. And it's sort 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.480 of like they're told, and they told do lots of 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:23.040 things like figure out how to streamline make our vaccine 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:29.480 production capacities more robust, and and and figure out how 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:33.840 to you know, I don't know, um, prevent prevent disease 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:37.160 from leaping from chickens into people. Uh, you know, that 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.400 would be Department of Agriculture. They're like lots and lots 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:44.120 of little things. They they scheme about, but at the 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:47.160 center of it is this question. And the question is 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:52.920 what do you do with people with the population before 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:56.720 you have a vaccine? And that sounds like a question 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:58.800 that you would have thought had been answered at that point. 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:01.760 In fact, this is the thing that was this really 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:05.679 interesting to them and to me, was that they received 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:10.920 wisdom from the nineteen eighteen pandemic. Was that social interventions 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:15.160 to go by various names, non pharmaceutical interventions, social distanc thing, 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:18.120 whatever you wanna call it, the closing of schools and 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:21.640 bars and churches and all that, and keeping six feet apart. 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:25.319 All that was was this was it was it was 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:29.479 concluded that didn't work in nineteen eighteen, and so the 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.920 the elites in public health thought, do you don't do 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.400 any of that. It just doesn't work. Um, And so 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:39.280 they had a question on their hands, we do we 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:42.160 just sit around and wait until we figure out the 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.680 vaccine and and hope not too many people die. Uh. 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:49.520 That's the beginning of their really their investigation. I'm going 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:54.160 to come back to the wrong takeaways from the pandemic 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:56.720 and a little bit. I just have to ask you 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:01.359 for a follow up. So the Bush administration pandemic response, 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:07.040 that's three administrations ago, almost twenty years ago. What happened 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:09.440 with that group? Did they ever managed to get a 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.640 plan together? And what did the most recent administration do 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:18.000 with what they had created? It's the most remarkable story. Um. 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:23.160 Not only do they get a plan together, um, they do. 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:28.320 They perform extraordinary feats like going back and completely reinvestigating 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:32.120 nineteen and determining that, oh, actually the social distancing stuff 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.200 did work. They just didn't understand how it worked because 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:40.360 they didn't understand. For example, you know, um, Philadelphia had 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:43.000 death rates that were multiples of the death rates of St. 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:48.120 Louis at the time. The wisdom received wisdom was that 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:50.960 was just kind of accidental. And in fact, what it 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:55.640 was was that social distancing policies we were implemented in St. 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:59.160 Louis earlier in relation to the arrival of the virus 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:03.640 than they were in Philadelphia. And they go there's it's 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:07.720 an incredible kind of story of how they figure this 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:11.160 stuff out. But they write a plan, and they write 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:14.920 a plan without This is a couple of critical components. 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:19.400 This one is regiven Kaya, the young doctor who's put 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:21.440 in charge of sort of assembling the people to write 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:24.320 the plan, leaves the c d C out of it. 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.680 And he leaves the CDC out of it because already 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:30.640 back then there is suspicion that the c d C 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:35.080 is an entrenched kind of bureaucracy defending its own turf. 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:39.439 And and what's required here is some new kind of thinking, 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:42.760 and they're very invested in the old kind of thinking. 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:45.040 And you don't want him at the table, which tells 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:47.440 you something. Right, were two thousand and six, and people 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:50.760 are already feeling this way about the CDC. And and 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:54.760 so after they get they create the plan. Um, there 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:59.800 is the trick of selling the CDC and the entire 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.200 ablic health community on the plan, which is in itself 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:06.640 a story of It's a two year story of you know, 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:11.840 three meetings and in the end, Um Carter measher, one 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:14.520 of my main characters who has you know, all these 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:18.280 two all my characters have these superpowers. Carter superpowers invisibility, 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:21.640 the ability to walk into the CDC which no one does, 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:26.160 and write a plan for them that they then took 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:28.760 on as their own. And they changed the headline and 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.080 that's all they did was changed the title of it, 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:33.920 and that was enough to give them ownership. Yeah, but 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:38.760 he physically kind of slips in UH and and writes 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.160 this thing with it makes them feel like they're doing it, 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:45.720 and they're left with the impression this was the c 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.600 d C S plan. And this this is very important 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:53.360 because the CDC at that moment is the world's great 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:58.040 health organization, public health organization, and whatever its relationship to 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.120 the American people is, it's really relationship to the rest 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.200 of the world is extremely powerful. And it goes out 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:09.440 in itself. This plan all over the world explains how, 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:13.440 for example, social distancing works and how you would implement it, 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:19.120 and UM and the UH and so the plan takes 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:23.720 root in lots of places, and it takes root in 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:27.480 theory in the United States. But there's this thing. Your 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:31.720 point is well taken. It's just three administrations ago um 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:35.560 Carter measure. My character, who is in the Bush White House, 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.640 is amazed when Bush leaves and Obama comes in. What 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:44.440 happens in the federal government as a rule, when administrations change. 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:48.160 They come into his office, they take all his computers, 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:50.840 all his hard drives, they remove all of his papers, 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:53.680 They take every piece of work he's done, and just 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.000 whisk it away where it goes. He never knows, And 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:01.760 it's like the memory of the previous administer ration is erased, 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:06.000 and all that's left is whatever human beings are around 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:08.880 and what they have in their head. And now he's 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:12.040 the human being who's designated to stick to hold over 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:15.040 from Bush to Obama. And he's only meant to stay 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:17.440 there for about six months in case something happens. Kind 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:22.440 of thing and um, and something happens. Right, there's a 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:25.520 faux pandemic. There's there is a pandemic, the swine flu 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.640 pandemic of two thousand and nine. But as one of 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:32.080 my characters puts it, it wasn't it wasn't that uh 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:34.920 that we dodged a bullet. If the nature shot us 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:36.800 with a bb gun, it was it was a lot 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:39.440 of people got that virus. It just wasn't as lethal 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:42.560 as initially got very very lucky. To the point you 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:47.520 just made you describe the real tragedy about government waste 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:50.920 is that one box. You described the government as a 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.120 series of boxes, little turfs where people have their own 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:57.160 knowledge and talent and expertise, and they create a culture. 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.240 And the big tragedy is that people in one box 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:04.359 might have the solution to a problem that's one or 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.719 two boxes over, but they never meet this no interaction, 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:11.520 none of the knowledge, none of the human wisdom gets 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:16.760 to spread throughout the government. So my story, that's true, 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:21.320 and my story partly dramatizes what happens if you break 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:24.080 down those boxes a little bit, because rage van Kaya did. 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:27.399 He brought these people together, hauled this doctor, you know, 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:31.159 out of obscurity from the Veterans administration, who proved to 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:34.119 be a savant in pandemics, who never would have been found. 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:38.320 But but once the thing, the thing is the shocking 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:43.520 is that we create, we invent, thanks to George W. Bush, 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:49.200 we invent pandemic planning. We we invent, we create the plan. 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:51.879 It is sort of become of the playbook from most 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:57.720 of the world, and we ourselves start to forget why 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.640 and we and forget what it is and forget it's important, 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:03.719 to forget the arguments that let everybody do agree this 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.800 is what you do. And the the Obama aministration sort 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:10.800 of has to learn it all over again. And they 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:13.560 are lucky, well, I'm smart because they kept Carter around 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:16.360 and Carter kind of teaches them stuff and they one 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:21.920 of the central lessons, uh, that they all had kind 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.639 of internalized, was that you need if you're gonna, if 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:28.679 you're gonna, if you're gonna face a pandemic, you have 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:30.359 to do it from the White House. That you can't 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:33.200 you can't just leave it to the CDC. That a 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:36.720 whole bunch of agencies involved the C. The CDC will 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:39.760 have its own skewed take on things. You use the CDC, 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:42.600 but you you run at the battlefield. Command is out 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:46.600 of the White House, and um, the obamaministration has to 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.879 kind of learn that all over again, uh, And Carter 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:52.720 sort of is part of the reason they learn it. 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:56.840 But but the bigger point is the way the way 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:03.160 our government does create things and throws throws enormous resources 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:07.520 into creating them and then does not preserve what's created 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:11.639 in the way you would wish it would. Um. And 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:16.120 because there is this very strange notion of a new 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:20.400 administration being having a clean slate or being a clean slate. Now, 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.800 smart presidents, you know, you know Obama was a smart 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:26.160 president at very heavily on bush and try to keep 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:28.600 people around. And he had a bunch of crises he 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:30.879 was dealing with at the time, do you remember, But 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:33.359 so there were reasons to keep people around. He wasn't 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:37.040 hostile to learning from the outgoing. But the outcoing is 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.199 still the outgoing to too great a degree. Um. You know, 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:45.120 four thousands something people who were president presidential employee appointees 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.679 flee the place when the new administration comes in and 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.920 those people were running the place. Now, what what kind 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:56.359 of company like could function if every four years you 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:59.400 whacked off the heads of all the managers and said 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:01.560 we're gonna bring and some new ones and and and 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:04.320 the new ones. They have a choice. They can either 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:06.359 kind of have a conversation with the old ones that 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:08.119 they can just go make it up all over again. 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.879 But that's basically how we run our government. Quite fascinating. 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:15.440 Let's talk a little bit about why people have such 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:20.880 a hard time getting their minds around a pandemic, including 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.960 some of the worst tragedies in American history. Why is 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:29.840 the human brains so bad at comprehending the way contagions spread. 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:35.040 We can intuit arithmetic growth, but our intuition fails when 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:40.480 we try and comprehend exponential growth. Why is that? Well, First, 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:44.239 it is an observation. That's a really important observation. And 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:47.800 it's the observation that is one of the observations that 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:49.520 is at the center of the story and at the 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:52.240 at the core of the thinking of the main characters. 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:59.800 They all realize that when you are facing a pandemic 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:05.360 virus that's spreading, you've got this this invisible enemy, that's 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:10.320 that's that's growing exponentially, and before you have signs of 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:13.480 it in the form of illness and then death to 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:15.600 just to be able to kind of take its measure, 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:20.920 it has. It has progressed greatly, and and you're you'll 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:24.480 be if you think you're looking at an arithmetic problem process, 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:29.520 you will be overwhelmed before you respond. And the this 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:31.680 is why that partly the reasons for the title of 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:35.320 the book. They all realized that in the beginning of 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:40.359 a pandemic that you have to you've got to imagine that, 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:42.400 you've got to look around corners, you've got it. You've 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:45.360 got to kind of you've got to see the thing 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:49.560 before it can be seen. And Carter measure, I mean, 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:55.400 they're always groping for for metaphors or analogies to try 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:59.240 to get people to understand how hard it is to 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:03.600 deal with a with a with a pandemic. Virus and 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:08.159 and fire was Carter's favorite, and the story he loved 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:11.080 was the story of the Norman McClean told in his 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:13.879 book young Men in Fire of the Man Gulf Fire, 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:17.080 where you have you have, you know, a dozen or 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:20.919 so very healthy young men walking down a gulch and 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:23.800 they see what looks they see a fire when they 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:26.639 see a fire coming at them, and they start to 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:31.560 run away. Um and like you know, a minute later, 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:35.600 they're all incinerated, and to the point where some of 0:22:35.640 --> 0:22:38.240 them didn't even bother to drop their packs and their axes. 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:41.240 And they were kind of judging the movement of the 0:22:41.280 --> 0:22:44.120 fire by how it was moving when they first saw it. 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:46.320 But by the time it gets them, it's moving two 0:22:46.440 --> 0:22:49.560 or three times faster. It's spring because the fire move 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:53.639 grows exponentially and the virus is like that. Um. And 0:22:53.640 --> 0:22:57.240 and it's so why is it that we don't we 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:01.920 have trouble with exponential processes? UM, I don't know when 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:04.959 we were in the savannah. How often do we see it? 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:07.200 You know, it's it's like one of those things that 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:12.479 you know it exists. We we we encounter it every 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:15.160 now and then. But why is it people have trouble 0:23:15.240 --> 0:23:19.119 with compound interest you know, it's the same sort of thing, right, Uh, 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:22.120 people give themselves all kinds of cross wise with compound 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:25.760 interests because they don't understand the power of it. Um. 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:27.679 We don't see it often enough for it to have 0:23:27.760 --> 0:23:31.680 an evolutionary impact on who passes along that gene or 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:36.520 not something like that. Maybe that's changing, but but it's 0:23:36.920 --> 0:23:42.320 but yes, and it creates a big problem for people 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:46.399 who are trying to save the society because because there 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:50.480 the we have, the mechanisms of government are so slow grinding, 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:54.240 and nobody wants to The phrase that drove my characters 0:23:55.080 --> 0:23:58.639 crazy was don't get ahead of the data, sort of 0:23:58.640 --> 0:24:01.000 like we're gonna wait for the data. By the time 0:24:01.040 --> 0:24:03.760 you have the data, you're dead. By the by the 0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:06.879 time by the time you know that there are you know, 0:24:07.520 --> 0:24:11.960 you know there there the virus is spreading internally in 0:24:12.000 --> 0:24:15.400 the United States, and there's one death. You know that 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:17.639 you can go back and say, well, that one death 0:24:18.119 --> 0:24:21.560 is a result of infection that caused that occurred a 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:25.679 month ago, and the virus is spreading it such and 0:24:25.720 --> 0:24:28.359 such a rate. So you probably have like a thousand 0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:32.280 cases a month a month ago that are multiplying exponentially. 0:24:32.560 --> 0:24:35.560 You've already lost your ability to contain it um So 0:24:35.640 --> 0:24:38.360 you've got to You've gotta jump out in front of that. 0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:40.800 You've got to You've got to act before you have 0:24:41.440 --> 0:24:45.680 visible evidence to act. Or you use the metaphor that 0:24:46.240 --> 0:24:50.440