{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"<iframe src=\"https://embed.acast.com/$/9a03fe9e-1ff0-4dcc-b3f6-50bd1f016ea4/1b6b7ebe-beaf-4760-9de1-a82c995346bb?\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"700\" height=\"250\"></iframe>","title":"Michael Lewis on the Pandemic","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/6195701f2eacc3a36070252a/619570bccb3c660012e3cde2.jpg?height=200","description":"<p>We talk to Michael Lewis about his new book The Premonition, which tells the story of the people who saw the pandemic coming and asks why they couldn't get a hearing.&nbsp;It's a tale of short-term failures and long-term trends in US government and it follows on from his previous book about the risks America has been running in hollowing out the administrative state.&nbsp;A sobering account with glimmers of hope for the future.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>Talking Points:&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>Old timers at the CDC say that things began to change after the 1976 swine flu outbreak.</p><ul><li>The CDC rushed a vaccine program, and some people got sick. Then the swine flu basically vanished.</li><li>After that, under Reagan, the head of the CDC became an appointed, political job. This made the CDC overall more political and less independent.&nbsp;</li><li>Most people who interacted with the CDC before this pandemic realized that it wasn’t very good at managing disease.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Doing a public health job well carries a high risk of getting fired.</p><ul><li>The experts in Michael’s story are consistently right about the trajectory of the disease; but they are often wrong about politics.</li><li>Should experts pay more attention to politics?&nbsp;</li><li>Experts can create discomfort for politicians, or they can give them cover—but that’s not their job. Michael thinks that politicians should be providing cover for the experts.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Why was it so hard to learn from the experiences of other cities in the heart of the crisis?</p><ul><li>In the 1918 pandemic, the difference between Philadelphia and St. Louis was the timing of the intervention.&nbsp;</li><li>It’s hard to see the effect of the interventions in the fog of battle.</li><li>The failure of testing in the US at the start of the pandemic meant that there was no way to identify where the virus was.</li><li>Just-in-time manufacturing and taut-supply changes made the ‘health industrial complex’ less able to respond quickly.</li><li>Will the pandemic make Americans care more about how the government actually functions?</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Mentioned in this Episode:&nbsp;</p><ul><li><a href=\"https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442/442836/the-premonition/9780241512470.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Michael’s new book, <em>The Premonition, a Pandemic Story</em></a></li><li><a href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25032342/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Neustadt and Harvey V. Fineberg, <em>The Swine Flu Affair</em></a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.nti.org/newsroom/news/inaugural-global-health-security-index-finds-no-country-prepared-epidemics-or-pandemics/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">The Nuclear Threat Initiative 2019 report</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2020/234-michael-lewis-updated\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Our last episode with Michael</a></li></ul><p><br></p><p>Further Learning:</p><ul><li><a href=\"https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-1007_article\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">David J. Spencer, ‘Reflections on the 1976 Swine Flu Vaccination Program’</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-year\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Lawrence Wright, ‘The Plague Year,’ <em>The New Yorker</em></a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02042-9\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">More on the San Quentin COVID epidemic</a></li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: </strong><a href=\"http://lrb.co.uk/talking\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>lrb.co.uk/talking</strong></a></p>","author_name":"David Runciman and Catherine Carr"}