The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

“Richard has the part of my brain I don’t have,” he said. “Richard is a philosopher type,” said Rajeev, who had brought them both into the White House. “He’s good at putting things into a bigger context. Carter is good at putting things into a smaller context.”

The new models of disease, slow and unwieldy though they were, gave Richard hope. D.A. Henderson, and the people at the CDC, along with pretty much everyone else in the public-health sector, thought that the models had nothing to offer; but they were missing the point. They, too, used models. They, too, depended on abstractions to inform their judg

There was, Carter thought, a downside to experience. “Experience is making the same mistake over and over again, only with greater confidence,” he said. The line wasn’t his, but he liked it.

To Richard’s way of thinking, the fact that the decision happened to have worked out did not mean it was the right decision; in a funny way, it was alarming that it had worked out, as it created a false sense of confidence in the process that had rendered it. In late September he noted that others sensed this, too. An idea that has gained currency

Carter now sensed when she might have changed her mind about him. Early on, they’d been discussing the pandemic plan, and he had shared with her his thoughts about maps. They were also his thoughts about plans, as a plan is a kind of map: a map of what you plan to do. He told her a story about some troops who’d gotten lost in the Alps. “They’re in

Foege had resigned after that. “The fact that they would risk the lives of children—it just bothered me so much,” he said. He later regretted his decision and wished that instead he had forced them to fire him, as it would have made more of a stink. The Reagan administration must have noticed the possibility. After Foege resigned, the White House c

But the shift inside the CDC that had begun with the Swine Flu Affair had led it to become a different sort of place. “Now I understood why the CDC was so admired,” said Charity. “It was because of people like him.” But Sencer had also exposed the price of bravery. After Sencer—or after Foege—the CDC’s relationship to disease control had changed in

The CDC did many things. It published learned papers on health crises, after the fact. It managed, very carefully, public perception of itself. But when the shooting started, it leapt into the nearest hole, while others took fire. “In the end I was like, ‘Fuck you,’ ” said Charity. “I was mad they were such pansies. I was mad that the man behind th

she noticed when the CDC made a curious pivot, from downplaying the virus to behaving as if it never could have been contained. For the better part of two months, they’d repeated the same mantra: the risk to Americans is low, and there is no evidence of transmission inside the country. That fiction ended on February 25, when the CDC’s lab in Atlant