DigeeBooks

For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about.

Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis' taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.

The characters you will meet in this audiobook are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A 13-year-old girl's science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm's-eye view to see what the CDC misses and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu...everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.

Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis is a nonfiction book that chronicles the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, focusing on the people who were trying to warn the government about the impending crisis.

Lewis begins the book by introducing us to Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Both men were aware of the potential for a global pandemic as early as January 2020, but they were unable to convince the Trump administration to take the threat seriously.

Lewis then tells the story of Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the CDC's top respiratory disease expert, who tried to warn the public about the dangers of COVID-19 in February 2020. Her warnings were met with resistance from the White House, which was downplaying the threat of the virus.

As the pandemic worsened, Lewis follows the stories of several other people who were trying to sound the alarm, including a group of scientists at the University of Washington who were developing a model to predict the spread of the virus, and a group of doctors at the University of California, San Francisco who were trying to develop a vaccine.

The Premonition is a gripping and important book that tells the story of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of the people who were trying to warn the government about the impending crisis. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how the pandemic unfolded and how we can prevent future pandemics.