The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

Joe DeRisi takes a call from Gavin Newsom, who asks DeRisi to tell him the three worst things he could do in response to COVID-19 and the three best. DeRisi tells Newsom that testing is the priority and that the rest of the list isn’t worth making. Test processing is currently taking 10 days.

The absence of rapid testing made finding and isolating the infected population impossible. DeRisi has faith that the CDC will offer a solution. He decides to change the Biohub into a testing facility and plans to publish a paper about the results to serve as a model for anyone wishing to follow their example. Within days, he has his people trained in COVID testing, but they don’t have the chemicals to test with, so he gets permission to raid the university labs for the chemicals.

DeRisi’s lab can process 2,666 tests each day and return results within 24 hours. His lab doesn’t have many customers, however, as hospitals continue to ship their samples to slower companies with whom they already have contracts.

Most places aren’t set up to process free tests. As DeRisi investigates the slowness of the medical facilities, he realizes that the medical complex is using distorted incentives.