We commence reading our Bioethics texts today with Campbell's Basics and Lewis's Premonition: A Pandemic Story. Michael Lewis says "Trump was a comorbidity" of the pandemic. That's one of the nicer words I can think of, for him. But Lewis is right, the previous occupant's mismanagement, dishonesty, and lunacy are only a part of the COVID story.
The story begins with Laura Glass, a prescient middle schooler in Albuquerque whose scientist dad taught her that "science was this tool for finding cool new questions to ask, and answer" and who came to understand what so many of our nation's nominal leaders did not: that there's "no difference between giving a person a vaccine and removing him or her from the social network," the result in each case being a halt the the spread of infection.
The story continues with Charity Dean, the young chief public health officer for Santa Barbara County in California with a passion for communicable disease and crisis who persisted in doing her job despite stiff resistance from misogynists, sexists, male chauvinists, and other health obstructionists. In childhood, "when she was feeling low, she had cheered herself up by reading books on bubonic plague." When she learns that the fine print of her job description empowers her to take whatever measures she deems necessary to block the spread of disease, the drama begins
Our stage is set for a compelling story, made all the more so by the fact that it's true. I foresee another Lewis-inspired film.
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