WEBVTT - Michael Lewis saw this coming 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:07.080 Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric and this is next question. 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:11.480 Best Selling author Michael Lewis has a real knack for 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:16.680 extracting page turning drama out of otherwise mundane and complicated 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:23.480 subjects like the housing bubble, bond sales, and baseball stats. 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:27.400 Several of those nonfiction books have been turned into award winning, 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:31.880 celebrity packed films like The Big Short, mortgage backed securities, 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:37.120 sub prime loans, tranches. It's pretty confusing, right, does it 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.760 make you feel bored? We're stupid? Well, it's supposed to 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:44.600 add moneyball John Be's on base percentage with four seven, 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:49.960 Damon's on base and I'll made this with Add that 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:57.080 up and you get divided by three. That's what we're 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:04.920 looking for. Three ball players, three ball players. Who's is now? 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:08.560 Michael Lewis is taking a crack at our pandemic reality, 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:12.200 which is still unfolding. His new book is called The 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:17.160 Premonition of Pandemic Story through the lens of three really 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:22.360 remarkable scientists. Michael tries to unravel the government's gross mismanagement 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.800 of the COVID response that's led to nearly six hundred 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:30.640 thousand deaths, which is among the World's Worst Outcomes. You'll 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:32.920 get to hear from one of the main characters in 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:36.360 the book later in this episode, but for now, let's 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:41.760 start with Michael Lewis. So, Michael Lewis, first of all, 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:44.840 so great to have you again on the podcast. And 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:49.440 how crazy is it that your last book, The Fifth Risk, 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.080 was all about, quote, what happens when the people in 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:57.280 charge of managing risks have no interest in them and 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:02.400 boom the pandemic hits were you basically proves your thesis. 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.200 You know, I don't want to gloat about this. It's 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:09.520 not an attractive it's not an attractive way to go 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:13.160 through life, but I did. The point of The Fifth 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.800 Risk was you don't know what's gonna happen. Right. We 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:19.760 have this instrument called the government that is uniquely suited 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.480 to deal with certain kinds of problems, and there's no 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:26.240 other instrument to deal with them, and pandemic disease is 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:28.959 one of them. And the fact that kind of like 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:31.800 then the Trump people rolled in and didn't pay much 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:33.840 attention to the government and said it was basically the 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:36.480 problem and didn't get the transition briefings and all that. 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:39.880 I did have this terror like what's gonna happen? How 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:42.200 is it gonna kill me? And and I didn't have 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:44.519 I didn't have any specific sense of like what was 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:46.840 gonna happen next, But I thought one of these risks 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:49.960 is gonna become reality and then you're gonna see what 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.760 happens when you when you just abdicate the responsibility. So 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:55.639 that's what's got me interested in the in writing in 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:57.400 the book in the first place was just like, well, 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:02.720 it happened, what happens next? You might be the only writer, author, 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:07.679 reporter Michael who doesn't point a finger squarely in Trump's direction. 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:10.360 And in fact, one of the people you profile in 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:15.080 your book says, basically, Trump is a comorbidity of a 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:19.720 larger disease. Can you explain what he meant by that? Yeah. 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:22.320 All of the characters in the book, the three main characters, 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:26.600 had been engaged pretty intensely with the question of what 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:30.000 happens if a pathogen lands in America and it starts 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:34.160 to spread well before Trump, and they had all seen 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:36.760 that the tools we had to deal with it were inadequate. 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.080 They had all seen that, particularly the CDC was not 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.040 really up to controlling disease. It was more like we're 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.960 like an academic institution, and that they could all see 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:47.760 that we didn't have a system of public health, like 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:50.240 it just didn't exist. What we have is these people 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:52.760 who were in this extraordinary role of being local public 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:56.560 health officers, and that they they're kind of tasked with 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:00.240 battlefield command on the ground, but they aren't real source. 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:03.240 They've been starved or resources for a generation. And the 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:07.080 focus oddly had not been for a long time on 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.360 like pandemics, it had been on bio terrorism, if it 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:14.480 had been on other things. So these people could see that, 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:17.160 all right, it doesn't matter who's president. We we have 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:19.480 a problem, like we have a problem that we don't 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:23.040 have the tool to deal with this. So when they 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:25.640 would not say that Trump helped, they would say something like, 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.960 we once had this machine. It worked pretty well. We 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:32.880 allowed it to rust and decay and it was still 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:35.280 sort of creaking down the highway, and then came a 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:37.640 president who took a sledge hander to it. But it 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:40.479 was it was the machine was not it was not 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:43.039 in good shape when he was elected. So so that 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:45.839 they weren't they they think of him as more symptom 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:48.599 than cause it's sort of like the same spirit that 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:51.800 elected him led to the corrosion of the machine in 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:54.800 the first place. But you also write that George W. 0:04:55.000 --> 0:05:00.240 Bush actually set things in motion for pandemic preparedness after 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:03.800 reading The Great Influenza by John M. Berry, and that 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:07.240 was about the nineteen eighteen pandemic. Uh and he read 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:10.559 it when he was on vacation, and he decided something 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:14.039 needs to be done about this. So does George W. 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.280 Bush deserve a little more credit than he is getting 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:21.000 in terms of at least seen that this was a 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:24.440 potential threat to the country in the world. He deserves 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:27.080 huge credit. I mean, I'm a little surprised to find 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.720 myself saying that, but he deserves huge credit. And he 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:33.039 he was freaked out, in a freaked out state of 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:34.719 mind when he read it, because not only did he 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:36.839 have nine eleven in the rear view mirror, but he 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:40.440 had Katrina basically on his desk, and it was like, 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.040 what else could go wrong? And he reads this book 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:45.040 about nineteen eight and he turns to someone in the 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:47.960 White House and he says, what's our pandemic plan? And 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.360 the person says, we don't. We don't have one. And 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:53.360 it was it was a really interesting case of how 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:56.440 fast the government can move when the president's piste off, 0:05:56.880 --> 0:05:59.599 it was, you know, a couple of weeks from that 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:04.800 moment to him using a rapidly sketched out plan by 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:07.120 a doctor who was in the White House name region 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.960 kaya you know, just a few pages to ask for 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:13.279 seven billion dollars from Congress, could go about planning for 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.320 a pandemic. And you can trace back to that moment 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:19.760 not only my main couple of my main characters, but 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:22.560 the whole plan to have a vaccine that that was 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:25.160 not based on using chicken eggs. I mean that the 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:29.160 reason we have vaccines so fast now is stuff they 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:31.960 did back then. So that was an example that's sort 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:34.039 of a shiny bright spot, like an example of the 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:37.360 government taking on a problem figuring out how to deal 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:41.760 with it. The problem is the strategy they cooked up 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:47.320 for how to limit death and disease before the vaccine arrives, 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.880 which is wholly original. All the social distancing that came 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.800 out of their plan. It was swallowed and understood hook 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.960 line and sinker bout foreign countries who the CDC explained 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.640 it to, and we never really got minds around it. 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:03.279 We were never prepared to do the things that you 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:06.400 needed to do to contain a virus. Well, if George W. 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:11.400 Bush deserves credit, conversely, does Barack Obama deserves some of 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:15.280 the blame for letting this apparatus rust, as you said, 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.760 to a point where it had been corroded so significantly 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.440 that Trump just had to put a sledgehammer to it 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:24.920 and destroy it. No, it's more complicated than that. So 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:27.960 that if you'd ask those guys in the Bush white House, 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.000 who's one of them stayed on into the Obama White 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:34.160 House and brought his fellows back to help deal with 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:36.720 the pandemic that didn't happen, the two thousand nine swine 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:41.280 flu pandemic, they would say it was a decade long 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:45.800 anyway process to implementing this plan, and that they'd say 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.560 a couple of things. They'd say, One that Obama made 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.920 the same mistake every other president made in the very beginning, 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:54.600 but then corrected. And the mistake was to kind of 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:59.640 shove to one side pandemic risk, meaning it wasn't it 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.560 wasn't immediately on the National Security Council as a thing 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.960 that responsibility. Bush has sort of elevated it for I 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:09.720 don't know about months. Obama kind of put it to 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:11.680 one side, but then brought it back quickly. And the 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.840 Obama administration actually did a really good job of trying 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:18.720 to institutionalize pandemic response in the White House. The Trump 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.000 administration got rid of that, and uh, and that that 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:25.440 was a problem. The other problem, I think and is 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.360 it's bigger than Obama. It's generational. It's sort of like 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:31.400 if it's a sin, I don't think of it as 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.199 a sin. It's like a cinemomission. In the case of 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:37.520 that administration, is that there is this argument that the 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:40.600 only way we're going to deal with these problems really 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:44.120 well is is pretty serious government reform, and it means 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:48.200 actually reforming institutions like the CDC. I think the characters 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:51.240 in the Bush administration who cooked up our pandemic plan 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:55.080 made one big mistake. They overestimated the ability of the 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.720 CDC to execute it. So they they thought, we embedded 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:02.199 in the CDC and we're done. It's good. The CDC 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:04.680 will run this thing like a like a war general. 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:08.520 And they overestimated the kind of the willingness, the bravery, 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:12.000 the capacities of the CDC, because all along the CDC 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.120 had been becoming for you know, it's been on a 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.960 steady drift for decades to becoming this kind of highly 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:23.000 politicized academic institution. You know, that was so shocking to me. 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.120 I mean, the CDC, as you point out in your book, 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:29.920 is so dysfunctional, and I guess the downward slide began 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:35.040 in the late seventies. I mean, basically, what happened to 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.160 the CDC. It lost its independence, as you say, it 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:43.440 became politicized, and the White House in essence had too 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.319 much control over it, and it became less and less 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:50.640 and less independent. Is that a fairer yes? Synopsis. Yeah, 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.520 it's a very curious thing, the relationship between the White 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.160 House and the CDC. But you go, what happened was 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:58.800 there was a there was a mistake the CDC made 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:01.840 back way back in the seven when it took charge 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:05.280 of what looked like a dead lea virus coming to America. 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.240 It looked like there was gonna be a swine flu outbreak. 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.320 There had been one, a little one in New Jersey 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:14.640 in the spring. They advocated rushing to vaccinate all Americans. 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:18.240 Some people died, not many, but anful people died from 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:20.480 the vaccine. And then they stopped vaccinating people in the 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:24.400 and the pandemic never happened. After that, the CDC director 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:29.440 ceases to be a career official who's got the protection 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:33.320 of a permanent public servant who the president just can't fire, 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:36.640 and who as also who runs the place for like 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:39.160 a decade or more and has a very long term 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:43.080 view of the institution. It's changed to a presidential appointing 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.560 to a political appointing, which means that almost implicitly that 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:49.000 the guy whoever, whoever is running the place is gonna 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.440 be running for eighteen months or two years. They're gonna 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:53.319 be on a much shorter leased with the White House. 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.160 They're gonna be of the political party of the president 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:59.960 most likely, they're gonna be and they're view they're gonna 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.719 your renter instead of a home right. They're gonna be 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:06.360 thinking of like, just avoid whatever the problems catastrophes of 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:08.400 the next eighteen months or two years are, rather than 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:11.120 build this institution for the moment it's going to be 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:13.840 most needed, which is in probably in the distant future. 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.560 To me, the story was so rich because this isn't 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:19.480 just the CDC. This has happened to a lot of 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:23.280 institutions in Washington. We have four thousand and something presidential 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:27.040 political appointees who come in and purport to run these places. 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:29.880 And it's just impossible. If you're if what you are 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:33.520 is an eighteen month visitors some vast institution, how are 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:35.360 you going to lead that place? And you really are 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:37.280 going to leave that place. You're gonna be better or 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:39.720 worse than the person who came before you. But no 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:42.760 company would do this right. You would never say I 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.840 got to change your CEO every eighteen months, and they've 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.680 got to be of a particular political affiliation. Were you 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:52.160 shocked by that? Were you shocked? I mean, you wouldn't 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:54.720 have been shocked but because of the fifth risk. But 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:56.600 when it came to the c d C, was that 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.640 shocking to you? There was a combination of shock and 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:03.440 miss read because to me, the CDC had this, you know, 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.360 golden reputation. It was one of those bright spots in 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.600 the government. I would have thought it earned that reputation, 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.520 but it earned it like a long time ago, the fifties, 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:17.000 the sixties, the seventies, and then then things start to 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.280 get murkier. So yes, I was shocked by their behavior 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:23.400 in the pandemic. It's incredible that they're like preventing people 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.160 from being tested for COVID who come back from wulan 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:28.760 because their test doesn't work, or because they don't want 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:30.280 to find it because if they find it, they have 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:32.360 a problem with Trump because Trump doesn't want to find it. 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:35.240 That's that It shocked me that they issued all this 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:38.760 guidance that was wrong. All that stuff was shocking, But 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:41.360 there was this mystery attached to the shock. How did 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.160 it happen? Like, how did this place? It's not filled 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:46.880 with evil people, It's filled with probably really good people 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:49.280 who were just in a bad system. Like how did 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:52.320 it get so systematically wrong? That was the thing that 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.040 was the mystery to me and for my characters. You know, 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:57.160 Charity Dean, who was the main character of the book, 0:12:57.200 --> 0:13:00.760 who's this local, this dynamic local public health office who's 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:04.280 fighting disease, you know, in hand to hand combat before 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:09.079 COVID finds that the CDC so interferes with her ability 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:11.840 to stop people from getting sick and dying that she 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:15.160 has to ban them from her investigations. I mean, she 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:17.000 she knew what was going to happen if they were 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:19.560 when there was a pandemic. It shocked me that it 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.920 had gotten that bad, that that it had gotten gotten 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:25.840 so un incapable of doing the thing it was supposed 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.480 to do. I'm thinking about the hippocratic oath, you know, 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:32.280 first do no harm, And it sounds like they were 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:38.400 actually proactively harmy, not just they weren't just inefficient and ineffectual. 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:43.760 They were actually hindering science, which is crazy. Well, they're 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:47.559 hindering response right in their minds. Probably rightly, they were 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.880 doing science like you wait till all the data is 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:53.840 in before you allow any decisions to be made. You 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.360 make sure you have complete certainty so you don't make 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.640 any mistakes. You focus on like the you know, writing 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:03.520 the paper, rather than fighting the disease. And the problem 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:06.680 with disease war with with this kind of combat is 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:10.040 its battlefield you're making. You have to make decisions in 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:13.760 conditions of uncertainty because by the time you have certainty 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.560 is too late. By the time you have certainty, you 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:20.600 don't have four cases of COVID in America, you have fifty. 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:26.960 Up next, one of the real life doctors featured in 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:30.400 Michael's book, a member of a secret group of scientists 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:44.080 trying to save the country. That's right after this let's 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:49.640 talk about the Wolverines. So you find these three incredible 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:53.840 badass scientists. First of all, how did you find them? 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.480 How did you track them down? And what was your process? 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:00.480 Michael um, the three main care This came to me 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:02.480 in three different ways. So the fifth risk had a 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:05.480 jungle guy named Max Styre who runs something called the 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:08.760 Partnership for Public Service, who it's seeking to kind of 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:11.800 fix government. He said to me early on, you got 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.600 to talk to my uncle, who was the former US 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.320 Navy secretary, who said to me, if you're going to 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:19.680 write anything about this, you need to meet the Wolverines. 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:22.560 And I said, who the hell are the Wolverines And 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:25.640 he said, basically, they're kind of the secret group of 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:28.680 doctors who meet whenever there is like a had a 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:31.480 fear of disease, pandemic kind of problems, and they go 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:33.720 back and they're kind of the people who are responsible 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:38.480 for the invention of pandemic planning. So I was moving 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:43.240 through the world last March, and the Wolverine say, you've 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.440 got to meet this woman named Charity Dean, who's number 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.200 two in the Health Department California. If anybody's gonna save 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:52.200 if us, it's her and another character I wrote about 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:55.920 in the Fifth Risk, who was Obama's chief data scientist 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.720 named d J. Patel, called me up and said, I've 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:01.680 just I'm from trying to help the state of California, 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:03.440 and You've got to meet this woman named Charity Dean. 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:07.080 And so I wrote a note finally to the Governor 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:09.200 of California. To the government of California, said I want 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:10.920 to meet this woman named Charity Dean, and they said, no, 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.000 you can't. She didn't want to talk to you. So 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:15.320 it took me about four weeks to get her private 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:19.880 cell number, and she said they're they're lying and and 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:22.800 and to figure out that, yeah, she's She kind of 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:25.000 unifies the story and she's the character I want to 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:28.600 build the book around. And the wolverine who ends up 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:32.640 being the main character from the tribe is Carter Measure, 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.720 and he is this savant but what was so interesting 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:38.640 to me about him is at heart, what he was 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:41.640 is a a critical care doctor who, as he said, 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:43.040 he has a d h D or a d D 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:46.000 or something exampled. I can't focus unless he has a 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:48.760 kind of life or death problem. And he discovered his 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:51.880 calling in the I c U, where people were living 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:56.160 and dying based on his, you know, decisions, and he 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:58.560 had hyper focus in the I c U. And he 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:02.720 was just really gifted at at and through kind of 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:05.800 a series of accidents, he keeps being pulled up by 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:10.520 the society by a string to deal with versions of 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.920 like crises life or death crisis, but at the institutional level. 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:18.720 First he's asked to run a giant VA hospital that's 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:22.000 in a total state of crisis because he's obviously really competent, 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.879 they think, and he frames it is like, the patient 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:27.159 is now my hospital. Then he gets pulled up to 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:29.840 run a whole chain of hospitals and the patient is 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:33.080 the is this all these hospitals And I've got to 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:35.240 prevent them from making the mistakes that end up causing 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.320 us all this these problems, And kind of by accident, 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.040 he's pulled into the Bush White House to figure out 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:44.119 how to save the society from a pandemic. And he 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:48.040 had this this incredible ability to come at a problem 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:50.680 in a really weird way and think about a new 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:54.879 kind of solution. And then Joe Ici, who is this 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.480 biochemist at UCSF who is the most badass virus enter 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.080 on the planet, and he's serving like in the James 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:05.040 Bond movie. He's cute. He creates all the gadgets he 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:08.119 used to go kill the bad guys. I do identify 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.840 with Q, but I'd like to put it towards infectious 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:14.920 disease rather than you know, hiding machine guns and cars. 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:19.240 My name is Joseph Desi. I'm a professor in biochemistry 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:22.480 and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, and 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:24.960 I'm the co president of the chan Zuckerberg bio Hub. 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:30.120 I first met Michael Lewis in two thousand and sixteen. 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.320 Five years ago, I published a book called flash Boys. 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:36.359 I was a big Michael Lewis fan, having read a 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.560 number of his books. I think Flashboys is probably one 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:42.399 of my favorites. A money manager in San Francisco who 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:44.399 liked the book wanted to go to dinner, and I 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:46.920 said sure. It turns out the reason he wants to 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:49.159 go to dinner is to say I have the character 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.960 for your next book. His name is Joe Esi. I thought, 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:55.960 all right, I'll go have a lunch with JODORESI. I 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:58.320 invited him over to the Chance Like Work bio Hub, 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:02.160 which is a nonprofit research institute affiliated with UC Staff, Stanford, 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:04.960 and Berkeley. It was like sort of indifferent to whether 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:06.480 he was a character in one of my books. He 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:08.919 just like that, that's cool, I'll meet this off. Um. 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:13.000 He was electrical, I mean electric. I've kind of pitched 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:16.600 this idea of of talking about infectious disease work and 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:20.680 things like that, and he seemed mildly interested, but you know, 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:23.760 not really that. I thought, God, I wish I knew 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.280 something about science. I wish I didn't get a d 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:30.160 in biology myself more year in high school, because someone 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:32.679 should write a book about this. Gaw. I mean, he's unbelievable. 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.040 He was like doing things like hunting down pandemics and snakes, 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.399 like find finding a virus that was wiping out parents. 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.520 He was. He was finding rare bugs that were killing 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:46.040 people in mysterious ways. He was, And I just thought, yeah, 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:48.440 I want to know more about this, but I didn't. 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:50.360 I felt that I didn't have a reason to write 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:53.520 about him until this happened. That was the last I 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.760 saw of him until you know, the pandemic hit and 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.680 then suddenly he got a lot more interested in infectious 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:01.879 disease easy and then I called him and he was 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:03.760 turned out shirt off. He's smack in the middle of it. 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:08.720 The Chance Luckerberg biohob as I mentioned, is a nonprofit 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:11.919 research institute of five ones. The three affiliate with UCSF 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:15.600 Stanford and Berkeley, and we're a research institute that is 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:19.240 dedicated to some basic science and the study of infectious 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:23.400 diseases in particular. And so for example, we were working 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:28.199 on a system for early detection of emerging pathogens worldwide, 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:31.639 especially in low and middle income countries, and we were 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:36.000 working on spinning up a number of these pathogen monitoring 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:40.960 sites in numerous countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia and Nepal, 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.720 Pakistan and many other places, with the idea that we 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:49.760 needed an early warning radar and early detection network that 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:54.200 would help us know when something new is coming our way. 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:58.760 So I was helping Cambodia get set up in January. 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:04.159 On my trip back from Cambodia through China, compared to 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:07.879 when I came through China into Cambodia only about ten 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:11.840 days prior, there was a much heightened level of security, 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:15.239 and not the security of you know, um X ray 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:18.200 machines looking for you know, things in luggage. It was 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:21.680 security around people. So they were big, these big, you know, 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:24.359 glass and acrylic boxes that you stood in and it 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:27.440 monitored your fever. It was a temperature sensor with a 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:29.800 video monitor, and there was a lot of security personnel 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:31.879 and everybody had to go in there and kind of 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:34.359 stand one at a time, and it was, you know, 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:37.320 a level, a heightened level that just wasn't there ten 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:43.840 days earlier. And that different said to me, Okay, something's 0:21:43.880 --> 0:21:46.920 going on. It's probably a bigger deal than we thought. 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:50.119 But did we have much more information than that, No, 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:53.000 we didn't really know. Alls I could tell is that 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:57.119 the feeling inside the airport, the security level and the 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:03.880 tenseness there, it was just something you could feel. February 0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:06.000 of the first cases really came in here. And then, 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:09.840 you know, the thing that really became apparent to us 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:17.000 was in early March, it became completely obvious that are 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:21.760 testing capacity in the United States and the commercial providers 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:25.640 and big labs were ill suited to carry the load 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:29.440 that was coming. There was a tidal wave coming and 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:36.840 nobody had the higher ground. Everybody was going to be flooded, 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:43.080