There's Always a Book

Have you ever noticed?  Whenever there's a crisis or a monumental event in our lives, I seem to have read a book that fits into the event.  I don't think it's because I read the right books.  Or because I read so much. (I'm actually a slow reader.) I think it's just because I read books. Any decent book will do. Even good fiction.

Today, with the COVID-19 virus loose in America, my thoughts turn to Michael Lewis' book "The Fifth Risk".

"The United States government employed two million people, 70 percent of them one way or another in national security.  It managed a portfolio of risks that no private person, or corporation, was able to imagine.  Some of the risks were easy to imagine: a financial crisis, a hurricane, a terrorist attack.  Most weren't: the risk, say, that some prescription drug proves to be both so addictive and so accessible that each year it kills more Americans that were killed in action by the peak of the Vietnam War.  Many of the risks that fell into the government's lap felt so remote as to be unreal: that a cyberattack left half the country without electricity, or that some airborne virus wiped out millions, or that economic inequality reached the point where it triggered a violent revolution.  Maybe the least visible risks were of the things not happening that, with better government, might have happened.  A cure for cancer, for instance."

 

Makes you wonder if we can't have all three at the same time: A cyberattack, a virus and a revolution.

Unless you live in Atlanta, you've probably never heard of Jay Bookman.  He put up what I thought was a most-insightful tweet the other day.




COVID-19 is completely immune to Donald Trump.  He is defenseless. And we -- as we make the slow-motion descent into the COVID-19 abyss -- find ourselves, effectively, leaderless.

Events are overtaking me, even as I write this. Trading was halted on the NYSE for a short time, we passed over 500 cases of COVID-19 last night and I am losing my ability to concentrate.  So I'm going to cut this short.

I would urge you: Don't panic. Focus on what your local leaders -- city, county, State -- are telling you.  Don't be part of the problem, be part of the solution. The Sun will rise tomorrow.  We will get through this.  Fear not.

Don Brown
March 9, 2020