Laura Glass starts a science fair project studying how infectious diseases spread through human social networks.

Laura and Bob Glass conclude that closing schools could dramatically slow the spread of a pandemic.

Laura Glass's science fair project wins the New Mexico State science fair competition.

Carter Mecher develops a layered Swiss cheese defense strategy to minimize pandemic mistakes while working at the VA.

Carter Mecher sends Bob Glass's pandemic model to Richard Hatchett, who invites Glass to the White House.

Carter Mecher and Richard Hatchett formalize their pandemic strategy as Targeted Layer Containment for the US government.

Carter Mecher and Richard Hatchett advise the Obama administration during a swine flu outbreak, recommending school closures.

Carter Mecher leads a group of seven doctors called the Wolverines, dedicated to pandemic preparedness.

Carter Mecher and Richard Hatchett begin emailing each other about a novel coronavirus emerging in China.

Wolverine Duane Caneva calls Charity Dean and asks California to lead the national pandemic response.

Charity Dean presents alarming COVID projections to her boss Sonia Angell, who dismisses them and defers to the CDC.

Deputy Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli calls Charity Dean and pressures her to act because the White House won't.

California Governor Gavin Newsom calls Joe DeRisi's Red Phone seeking guidance on the COVID pandemic response.

Charity Dean resigns from her California state health position after her pandemic initiatives are repeatedly blocked.

Carter Mecher's mother dies from COVID, a personal loss despite his years of pandemic preparedness work.

The story begins with Laura Glass and her father Bob developing the concept of social distancing through a science fair project. Carter Mecher refines these ideas into a formal government strategy called Targeted Layer Containment, working alongside Richard Hatchett under the Bush administration. Their group, later known as the Wolverines, keeps watch as COVID-19 emerges in China and races to get California—guided by Charity Dean—to lead the national response. Dean's efforts are blocked by her own boss and by federal inaction, while a call from a senior Homeland Security official reveals a White House too paralyzed to act. Despite the extraordinary work of these outsiders, systemic failures mount, Dean resigns, and Carter suffers the ultimate personal cost when his mother dies from the very disease he spent years trying to prepare the country for.

The headline events driving America's pandemic response.

Bob Glass enlists programmer Walt Beyeler to add social interaction variables to Laura's disease-spread model.

Charity Dean performs an outdoor autopsy on a TB patient using garden shears, over the coroner's objections.

Charity Dean shuts down the Thomashefsky clinic after discovering multiple hepatitis C infections among its patients.

Charity Dean orders the evacuation of a rest home during a massive mudslide, resulting in seven resident deaths.

California's health secretary offers Charity Dean a deputy position in Sacramento to help overhaul the state's pandemic readiness.

Joe DeRisi identifies SARS by testing a lung tissue sample delivered to his lab in a FedEx package.

Joe DeRisi speaks to a secretive military group called the Jasons and demonstrates how the Virochip detects viruses.

DeRisi's lab identifies a deadly infection in a Wisconsin teenager's spinal fluid, and penicillin cures the boy.

National Security Adviser John Bolton is hired and immediately fires pandemic preparedness adviser Tom Bossert.

James Lawler sends the Wolverines a message informing them of seventeen new coronavirus cases in Wuhan.

Carter Mecher proposes testing hospital patients with flu-like symptoms in major cities, but the CDC refuses.

Joe DeRisi converts the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub into a rapid COVID testing facility within days.

A hospital's computer system cannot process DeRisi's free COVID testing offer because it won't accept zero as a payment amount.

Former CDC Director Bill Foege writes a private letter to current Director Robert Redfield condemning the agency's pandemic failures.

Charity Dean founds The Public Health Company to help prepare the country for the next pandemic.

Bob Glass's pandemic model gains scientific depth when programmer Walt Beyeler adds social interaction variables, laying groundwork for future policy. Charity Dean establishes herself as a relentless public health officer through cases like the Thomashefsky hepatitis C clinic and the Montecito mudslide, before moving to Sacramento. Meanwhile, Joe DeRisi builds a remarkable track record of pathogen detection—from identifying SARS to saving a dying Wisconsin teenager—and eventually transforms his lab into a COVID testing facility. When National Security Adviser John Bolton fires pandemic adviser Tom Bossert, a critical gap opens in federal preparedness just as the Wolverines begin tracking the Wuhan outbreak. The government's failures become concrete: the CDC rejects sound testing proposals, hospitals literally cannot accept free help because their computer systems won't process zero as a payment, and a former CDC director writes a damning private letter about the agency's collapse. Dean ultimately builds her own pandemic response infrastructure entirely outside the government.

Behind-the-scenes efforts and institutional failures across the pandemic.

Laura Glass realizes that isolating people from social interaction could be just as effective as vaccines against a pandemic.

Charity Dean investigates a meningitis B outbreak on a college campus and severs her relationship with the CDC.

George W. Bush asks Rajeev Venkayya to draft a national pandemic plan after reading about the 1918 flu.

D.A. Henderson, the man credited with eradicating smallpox, initially opposes the Glass pandemic model when Carter and Hatchett present it.

Carter Mecher visits a school and concludes that schools are the most socially dense environments for disease transmission.

Carter Mecher and Richard Hatchett publish a paper proving that early action is critical to reducing pandemic deaths.

Carter Mecher reflects that the perceived swine flu victory will instill a dangerous false confidence about future pandemics.

Joe DeRisi returns from a research trip and notices everyone at a Chinese airport is wearing masks.

The first US citizen tests positive for the novel coronavirus after returning from Wuhan.

Charity Dean reads Chinese newspapers independently and builds COVID projections for California that shock her with their severity.

Charity Dean joins a Wolverines conference call and warns Carter Mecher that California has no functioning public health system.

Prisoners transferred from another facility bring COVID to San Quentin prison, and twenty-eight inmates die.

Charity Dean's genome sequencing plan is approved by Governor Newsom but then vanishes into bureaucratic inaction with no explanation.

Bill Foege's private letter criticizing the CDC's capitulation to the Trump administration is leaked to the press.

Carter Mecher goes to a cemetery to pray after his mother dies from COVID.

The foundational insight—that isolating people can work as well as vaccines—emerges from a teenage girl's science project and is later reinforced by official pandemic planning, though experts like D.A. Henderson initially resist it. Carter Mecher and Richard Hatchett confirm through school visits and published research that early intervention is everything, a lesson the swine flu response fails to fully absorb. As COVID emerges, a series of alarm bells go unheeded: DeRisi spots masked crowds at a Chinese airport, the first US case is confirmed, and Charity Dean's independent projections reveal a catastrophe in the making. Dean warns Carter that California has no functioning public health system, but her innovative ideas—including a genome sequencing plan—vanish into bureaucratic indifference with no explanation. A leaked letter exposes the CDC's moral collapse, and the book ends with Carter at a cemetery, mourning his mother and the country's failure to act on decades of clear warnings.