If no other read this year, read this book
Mostly free, only two chapters paywalled: THE PREMONITION, A Pandemic Story
It's important for you to read this book. Really important. Every chapter has multiple amazing insights like...
'when you closed schools and put social distance between kids, the flu-like disease fell off a cliff. (The model defined “social distance” not as zero contact but as a 60 percent reduction in kids’ social interaction.) “I said, ‘Holy shit!’ ” said Carter. “Nothing big happens until you close the schools. It’s not like anything else. It’s like a phase change. It’s nonlinear. It’s like when water temperature goes from thirty-three to thirty-two. When it goes from thirty-four to thirty-three, it’s no big deal; one degree colder and it turns to ice.”'...
“I couldn’t design a system better for transmitting disease than our school system,” he said after his visit.
“There is nowhere, anywhere, as socially dense as school classrooms, school hallways, school buses... "
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“They really should just change the name,” she said. “It shouldn’t be the Centers for Disease Control. It should be the Centers for Disease Observation and Reporting. That’s what they do well.”
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By the time they appealed to the CDC, the boy would be dead. Joe had sat down with UCSF’s resident bioethicist—his actual title—and, whatever he had said, it had been persuasive. Joe told his friend what he’d found, and his friend gave penicillin to the boy, and, inside of a week, the boy walked out of the hospital. He even sent them a video. Hey, you guys, thanks for saving my life . . .
That sort of happy thing happened every so often during the three and a half years Michael Wilson spent in the DeRisi Lab. But the Red Phone was wildly unsystematic, and the central truth about it was that by the time people rang it, it was usually too late. The calls would come only after some doctor, desperate for help, read about the DeRisi Lab. Or, more commonly, after someone who knew Joe or Michael Wilson met someone who knew someone who was in trouble. If you happened to be dying of an unknown brain disease, your chances of survival rose if you had no more than two degrees of separation from either Michael Wilson or Joe DeRisi.
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The number of infections required to achieve herd immunity could be calculated, as it was a simple function of the reproductive rate. (The formula was 1 − 1/R0, where R0 was the reproduction number.) The simple truth that the formula captured: the more transmissible the disease, the more people needed to be infected before the herd was theoretically safe. Measles’ reproductive rate of 18, on the high end, implies that ninety-five percent of the population needs to be immune to measles before measles stops spreading. That’s why we have as our goal to vaccinate 95 percent of the population against measles. Before COVID-19 stopped spreading, two-thirds would need to become vaccinated. -
It's important for you to read this book. Really important. Every chapter has multiple amazing insights like...
'when you closed schools and put social distance between kids, the flu-like disease fell off a cliff. (The model defined “social distance” not as zero contact but as a 60 percent reduction in kids’ social interaction.) “I said, ‘Holy shit!’ ” said Carter. “Nothing big happens until you close the schools. It’s not like anything else. It’s like a phase change. It’s nonlinear. It’s like when water temperature goes from thirty-three to thirty-two. When it goes from thirty-four to thirty-three, it’s no big deal; one degree colder and it turns to ice.”'...
“I couldn’t design a system better for transmitting disease than our school system,” he said after his visit.
“There is nowhere, anywhere, as socially dense as school classrooms, school hallways, school buses... "
-
“They really should just change the name,” she said. “It shouldn’t be the Centers for Disease Control. It should be the Centers for Disease Observation and Reporting. That’s what they do well.”
-
By the time they appealed to the CDC, the boy would be dead. Joe had sat down with UCSF’s resident bioethicist—his actual title—and, whatever he had said, it had been persuasive. Joe told his friend what he’d found, and his friend gave penicillin to the boy, and, inside of a week, the boy walked out of the hospital. He even sent them a video. Hey, you guys, thanks for saving my life . . .
That sort of happy thing happened every so often during the three and a half years Michael Wilson spent in the DeRisi Lab. But the Red Phone was wildly unsystematic, and the central truth about it was that by the time people rang it, it was usually too late. The calls would come only after some doctor, desperate for help, read about the DeRisi Lab. Or, more commonly, after someone who knew Joe or Michael Wilson met someone who knew someone who was in trouble. If you happened to be dying of an unknown brain disease, your chances of survival rose if you had no more than two degrees of separation from either Michael Wilson or Joe DeRisi.
-
The number of infections required to achieve herd immunity could be calculated, as it was a simple function of the reproductive rate. (The formula was 1 − 1/R0, where R0 was the reproduction number.) The simple truth that the formula captured: the more transmissible the disease, the more people needed to be infected before the herd was theoretically safe. Measles’ reproductive rate of 18, on the high end, implies that ninety-five percent of the population needs to be immune to measles before measles stops spreading. That’s why we have as our goal to vaccinate 95 percent of the population against measles. Before COVID-19 stopped spreading, two-thirds would need to become vaccinated. -
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