Pandemic Premonition

One of the most remarkable news stories I’ve seen during this time is that of President George W. Bush’s prescience about the possibility of a pandemic and the urgent need to prepare for it.

The former president is a voracious reader, having completed 186 books while in office between 2006 and 2008 alone (the average American reader get through four books a year), in addition to reading through the entire Bible annually.

Well, that literary avocation came in quite handy, when, as reported by NBC’s Matthew Mosk, Mr. Bush was on vacation at his Texas ranch in the summer of 2005 and he began reading an advance copy of a book by John Barry called The Great Influenza, a history of the 1918 influenza — history’s all-time most lethal disease outbreak. When President Bush returned to Washington, he called Fran Townsend, his top homeland security advisor, into the Oval Office and gave her the book’s galley, telling her, “You’ve got to read this. Look, this happens every 100 years. We need a national strategy.”

Townsend recalls that her immediate response was not enthusiastic. “My reaction was, I’m buried. I’m dealing with counterterrorism. Hurricane season. Wildfires. I’m like, ‘What?’ He said to me, ‘It may not happen on our watch, but the nation needs the plan.’ ”