The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

by Michael Lewis

That was Joe’s big takeaway from the story: what he called the last mile problem in medical science. Corporations were interested only in stuff that made money. Academics were interested in anything worthy of publication, but once they had their paper done, they tended to lose interest. The government was meant to fill in the blanks, but the United States government by now mystified Joe. He’d visited the CDC to explain the new genomic technology, only to be met with boredom and blank stares. In the Food and Drug Administration there was one woman—a single human being—trying to curate the academic literature so that doctors and patients could easily access new knowledge. She’d taken it upon herself; no one had asked her to do it. “It’s often individuals who pick up the baton, and they’re not even doing it as part of their day job description,” said Joe. “Scattered throughout those organizations there are these people, but they aren’t organized, trying to compensate for the deficiencies in the system.” The Red Phone could save your life if you called it in time. The system had configured itself in such a way that, more often than not, you didn’t.